How can you handle business handover? (part 2)

In the first part, we discussed what should be handed over during a business over. This part will focus on the criteria of a “good” business handover and how to achieve it.

What are the criteria of a "good" business handover?

To enable the continuous transfer of business knowledge

Transfer the business knowledge acquired over time from the handover party to the takeover party, and realize the transfer of relevant knowledge through business handover.

To ensure the continuity and stability of the work

The completion of a thorough and effective handover not only ensures the continuation of BAU (Business As Usual) , and that there won’t be faults or poor connections due to the departure of the handover party; it also ensures the stability of teamwork, avoiding service instability and management confusion.

To clarify job responsibilities

To a certain extent, it helps the takeover party to clarify their job responsibilities and what matters are related to them, thereby reducing the ambiguity of responsibilities at work.

How to achieve a "good" business handover?

Organizing business documents

• Create a business handover subject folder (considered a parent folder) in the place specified by the handover work (eg: SharePoint);

• Under this parent folder:

  • Create subfolders with different business themes based on different business segments;

    • Put all related documents, diagrams, tables, etc. of a particular section in the same subfolder (prioritize documents over links—links might become invalid);

  • Create a key content index document, and list all the links to the core content related to the handed over business, so that follow-up personnel can quickly find it;

  • Create a folder for handover training recordings, download all the recordings from the cloud, upload them to this folder, and name them in an easy-to-recognize way so that they can be easily accessed;

  • Create a key content index document based on the handover training demonstration video, and list the handover training video link and video agenda uniformly, so that the follow-up personnel can directly check the corresponding video and quickly follow up on the operation as needed.

     

     

Organizing handover training

For all the work content, business logic, etc. to be handed over, by default, we need to go through a series of sessions with the receiver. As I mentioned earlier, the core of this piece is "Tell them how to do it and show them how you do it". 

Here, only specific organizational techniques are involved, and the key points are as follows:

• Handover training can be divided into multiple sessions according to the business/technical sector;

• Design a series of session themes and content (this is easy for the handover party, but it’s necessary to arrange a reasonable amount of information per session based on complexity so that the takeover team isn’t overwhelmed or given too little info);

• Invite the receiver to participate in the corresponding session;

• Remember to record the screen (trust me, checking the video will be more efficient than checking the document);

• Download the cloud screen recording data, re-upload it to the corresponding location of the transfer folder, and name it reasonably;

• Comb through the core content of each session to index documents as key content for handover training demo videos.

   

   

Practical guidance for BAU and other related requests 

The core of this part is to "Let them do it," and provide guidance and answer questions on demand in a "nanny style" throughout the whole process.

Here are some suggestions for reference:

• First, the transferring party needs to sort out the BAU content that has been processed;

• Then, tell the receiver according to the BAU category: when encountering Case 1/2/3..., use Solution 1/2/3...:

  • If the problem isn’t complicated, it’s recommended to let the receiving party handle it directly, and the transferring party can guide and answer questions at any time;

  • If the problem is more complex, you can start as a pair until the receiver can operate independently.

• Finally, if there are some new requests that don’t have historical experience to draw on, the receiver should think first and provide solutions, and the handover will give guidance from the side to see if the solution should be used or transformed into a new product function, and follow the product demand route to achieve it.

This handover was unique and particularly challenging. Usually, with a handover, it is one person moving on, or one team handing to another within the same business. For this case, it was a complete handover to a new business, meaning there was basically zero interaction once the handover was complete. This made the handover particularly hard as you needed to set them up for success completely through a combination of extensive documents, training, and knowledge sharing.

I hope our experiences on this project will help you deal with handover in the future.