Engagement four of four
Documented handover
A handover is finished when a competent stranger could run the arrangement from the paper alone. That is a harder test than it sounds, and it is the only test that distinguishes a handover from a farewell e-mail with attachments.
The pack, leaf by leaf
The pack is assembled in a fixed order so that the sheet most needed under pressure is the first one out. Each leaf names the person who holds it afterwards, because a document without a named holder is a document that exists until the next tidy-up.
- Leaf 1 The network map Every device named, every address recorded and every link drawn as it physically runs. Held by the client in printed form in the comms cupboard and in a file the client controls, because the copy stored on the server is the copy unavailable on the morning the server is the problem.
- Leaf 2 The operating runbook The short page of instructions kept beside the equipment: the order things are powered on in, when the copy runs, how a restore is asked for, and what happens when a new person starts. Written in the client's own times and the client's own kit, and short enough to stay on one page.
- Leaf 3 The location of the credential register The register itself stays under the client's control throughout. The leaf states where it is, who holds it, which accounts it needs to contain, and who the second key-holder is, so that a single absence never becomes a locked door.
- Leaf 4 The backup schedule What is copied, how often, where each copy is kept, and how many copies are retained in each tier before the oldest is overwritten. The leaf also names the one person who owns the schedule and the single occasion on which they must revisit it.
- Leaf 5 The restore-test notes One note per test, in date order: the copy used, the equipment it was opened on, the file checked, the time taken and the outcome. Read as a run rather than one at a time, they show whether a restore is getting slower, which is a question no single note can answer.
- Leaf 6 The supplier and renewal sheet Each system with its supplier, the account reference, the renewal date, and the address the renewal notice arrives at. This leaf exists because renewal notices go to whoever placed the first order, and that is frequently an inbox nobody opens now.
Who holds what, and why it is that way round
Every document in the pack is held by the client. The office keeps its own working papers, which are the review, the plan and the notes that make an engagement auditable, but the operative copies live with the business that has to use them.
The credential register is the clearest case. A register held by a consultancy is one the client would have to ask permission to read, which defeats the purpose of a handover and creates a dependency that serves the consultancy rather than the client. The register therefore stays in the client's safe or the client's own password tool, and the pack records only where it is and who is able to open it.
Access granted for a piece of work runs the same way: it is created by the client in the client's own directory under a named account the client is able to see, and it is withdrawn by the client when the work finishes. That is a one-minute step at the end of an engagement, and it is written into the plan so that it is not the step everybody forgets.
The measure of a good handover is that the next engineer does not have to ring the last one, which means it is also the measure of a consultancy worth asking back.
Keeping the paper true once nobody is watching
A pack goes out of date in three ordinary ways: equipment is replaced, a person leaves, or a new system starts holding records. Each of those has a leaf it affects, and the front sheet of the pack says which, in one line apiece, so that the update takes five minutes rather than an afternoon of working out what changed.
The office is content to be asked back to refresh a pack, and equally content for the client's own staff to keep it current, which is the more common outcome and the healthier one. Where a business has grown enough to take the work in-house, the pack is the thing that makes the first week of that person's job possible, and the office would rather hand over a pack that is used than retain a client who cannot read their own network.
Where a refresh is wanted, an e-mail to helpdesk@coolorangesolutions.digital saying which of the three things happened is enough to start, because the pack itself supplies the rest of the context.
The earlier engagements are systems reviews, migration planning and network and backup design. The runbook set out in leaf 2 is typed out in chapter 00 of the front page.