Handing Off Your Service

Most commonly at Truss, client engagements end when a contract finishes with no renewal. When a this happens, it’s important to follow a set of guidelines to properly support users, set up new service teams for success, and close the client relationship amicably. This section contains some guidelines for how you can make that happen successfully.

Supporting the users

Making sure the users are supported through transition is the top priority when handing off.

Check that revoking any individual accounts when offboarding won’t disrupt service. This includes any third party subscription renewals, such as DNS records for the application.

Check that any in flight communications with users, such as triage tickets, are accounted for.

During this time, focus less on new feature work (if at all), as it could leave the users with incomplete or poorly supported experiences. This is a better time to work on any outstanding bugs or refinements.

Handing off your work

At a minimum, any artifacts from the project should be handed off to the client. This includes, research findings, designs, application code, and infrastructure.

Ideally, access will have been properly shared throughout the project to make this as seamless as possible. However, different members have different access needs (for example, a product owner may not have AWS access), so make sure to work with the client to hand off that access to whom it is applicable.

If a new team is taking over then you should work to handoff that work. Commonly, there will be an overlap period where both teams will be working on handoff. Share your experiences, findings, and knowledge of the user with them so that the new service team can learn from your work.

If an application is running, help the new team get set up with the developer environment and review the application architecture. Ensure they have the ability and understanding to deploy new code.

Closing out with client stakeholders

Before offboarding, check in with the client about what their needs are for a successful handoff.

Some helpful activities during this time are:

• Have a retro. Focus on end-to-end project lessons.
• Help build a future roadmap for the client based on the work the team has done, their priorities, and capacity.
• Celebrate your accomplishments. Look back at the goals of the project and the work you’ve done together.