A short guide to documentation and handover

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. Everything we would tell a client about documentation and handover in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

Why it matters

Handover is a deliverable, not a courtesy. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

What good looks like

It should include credentials, hosting, and how to deploy. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

What to watch for

If only one person can run it, you have a risk. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

What this looks like day to day

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
• Handover is a deliverable, not a courtesy — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.