Handover
Handover is complete when the customer's team can operate, change and recover the system without us — and can prove it. A document transfer is not a handover.
Preparation
| Area | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Deliverables | Infrastructure, applications, backups and monitoring deployed and working |
| Documentation | Deployment, operations, troubleshooting and recovery procedures complete |
| Testing | Final functional, load and recovery tests passed |
| Access | Customer has access to every account, repository, pipeline and state store |
| Knowledge | Training sessions prepared and scheduled |
| Runbooks | Written, reviewed, and linked from the alarms that trigger them |
Handover documentation
Project overview
- Scope and what was delivered.
- Architecture diagram with each component labelled.
- Environments and how they differ.
- Key services and why each was selected.
Infrastructure as code
| Content | Detail |
|---|---|
| Repositories | Location, purpose, ownership |
| Module structure | What each module provisions |
| State | Backend configuration, bucket, lock table, access |
| Environments | Variable files and how to apply them |
| Access | Who can apply, and how approval works |
| Change process | How a change is proposed, reviewed and applied |
Application delivery
- Pipeline description, stage by stage.
- How to build and deploy manually if the pipeline is unavailable.
- How to roll back, and how long it takes.
- Where artefacts are stored and how they are tagged.
- Environment variables and secrets, and where they are held.
Operations
- Dashboards and what each shows.
- Alarms and the runbook for each.
- Routine tasks: certificate renewal, key rotation, patching, scaling.
- Backup schedule and restore procedure.
- Incident process, escalation and contacts.
Security
- IAM model and how access is granted.
- Network segmentation.
- Encryption and key management.
- Detection configuration.
- How to respond to a security finding.
Recovery
- RTO and RPO agreed.
- Backup locations and retention.
- Restore procedure, with measured times from the drill.
- Failover procedure.
- What to do if the primary region is unavailable.
Knowledge transfer
| Session | Audience | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture walkthrough | Engineering and operations | Components, data flow, decisions and trade-offs |
| Pipeline walkthrough | Engineering | Build, test, deploy, rollback; how to change it |
| Operations walkthrough | On-call | Dashboards, alarms, runbooks, routine tasks |
| Security walkthrough | Security and operations | Controls, detection, response |
| Recovery drill | Operations | Execute a restore and a failover, measured |
| Change process | All | How change is proposed, reviewed and approved |
Sessions are recorded and the recordings handed over, so the customer can train new joiners.
Verification
Handover is verified, not assumed:
- The customer's engineer deploys a change through the pipeline unaided.
- The customer's engineer rolls it back unaided.
- The customer's engineer restores a backup into a test environment.
- The on-call engineer responds to a simulated alarm using the runbook.
- The customer can access every repository, account and state store.
- Every alarm resolves to a runbook.
- Documentation has been reviewed by the customer and gaps corrected.
A handover where the customer watched but did not do has not transferred capability.
Acceptance
| Item | Accepted by | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation | Technical owner | Review record |
| Training | Attendees | Attendance and recordings |
| Operational readiness | Operations lead | Drill results |
| Security readiness | Security lead | Control verification |
| Formal sign-off | Sponsor | Signed acceptance |
Post-handover
| Period | Support |
|---|---|
| Hypercare (2–4 weeks) | Daily check-in, priority response, defect fixes |
| Transition (1–3 months) | Named contact, advisory support, escalation path |
| Steady state | Per the support agreement, if any |
Hypercare ends on a defined date with a defined exit criterion — for example, two weeks without a critical incident and a completed drill.