A practical checklist for documentation and handover

It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. Run through this the next time documentation and handover comes up.

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

The checklist

• Handover is a deliverable, not a courtesy
• It should include credentials, hosting, and how to deploy
• If only one person can run it, you have a risk
• Someone is named as the owner
• There is a date to review it again

What it costs to ignore

Handover is a deliverable, not a courtesy. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

The short version

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. Three things worth confirming about documentation and handover before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• It should include credentials, hosting, and how to deploy — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.