Before you close
Handoff Readiness Checker
Check a handoff or closure checklist the way the team receiving the work should, before the project team moves on.
Read a checklist and, if you have them, the open issue log and the contracts list, as .xlsx or .csv, inside your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
Handoff or closure checklist
Drop a spreadsheet here
One row per item: what, who, status, when. Evidence and acceptance columns if you keep them.
Open issues (optional)
Drop a spreadsheet here
The issue, defect or RAID log, to see what passes to support.
Contracts (optional)
Drop a spreadsheet here
Contracts and purchase orders, with end dates and status.
The receiving team’s questions
A handoff checklist is usually written by the team leaving. The questions that matter are the receiving team’s: is every item owned by one named person, is it done, and if it is done, where is the evidence? Items due after the handoff date are flagged, because once the project team has gone nobody is left to finish them. Acceptance items marked done with no record of who accepted them, or when, are flagged hardest: that is the record a disputed handoff turns on.
What handoffs forget
The tool places each item in one of eight standard areas: acceptance, support transfer, documentation, access and accounts, contracts and finance, open issues and risks, people and communication, and lessons and records. An area with nothing in it is listed, with the reason it tends to matter. Some handoffs genuinely have nothing in an area, so a missing one is a question, not a failure.
Open issues and contracts
Add the issue log and every open issue is listed with its priority and whether anyone is named to receive it. Add the contracts list and the tool finds contracts that run on after the handoff with no one to manage them, contracts past their end date still shown as active, and closed contracts with money still open against them.
No checklist yet?
Download the starter checklist: two to four items in each of the eight areas, with columns for owner, status, due date and evidence, ready to edit and bring back.
What this does not do
It does not decide whether to hand over; that is for the people giving and receiving the work. It cannot tell whether evidence is adequate, only whether there is any. And its placing of items into areas is by wording, so an unusual checklist may need its area column filled in.