Project Handover Framework / Checklist

Description

Introduce project handover framework - checklist for getting the project from previous project manager. The best practice: to have all of this information updated in one place and begin to gather it from the first day of your work.

What to handover?

1. Product/Project Overview

   • Functional and non-functional requirements
   • Use Cases
   • Development Metrics

2. Team

   • List of team members
   • Feedback from management
   • Feedback from HRs
   • Personal development plans
   • Vacation plans
   • Education plans
   • Succession chart

3. Design

   • Software Architecture and Strategy
   • Data Model (ER)
   • 3rd party products and interfaces
   • Communications Strategy
   • Languages and Scripts
   • User Interface
   • Design Constraints
   • Performance
   • Access, Roles and Authentication
   • Reporting

4. Development Tools

   • Development Environment
   • Version Control System (VCS)
   • Bugtracker
   • Code Analysing
   • Continuous Integration Tool
   • Wiki
   • Automatic documentation building

5. Source Code

   • Coding Conventions and Guidelines
   • Solution Structure
   • Dependencies
   • Code quality
   • Complexity
   • Exception Handling
   • Logging
   • Comments
   • VCS strategy (e.g. gitflow)

6. Build and Release Management

   • Build types
   • CI/CD
   • Release and patch strategy

7. QA

   • Unit testing and code-coverage
   • Integration and API Testing
   • Load Testing
   • Build Verification Testing
   • UI Testing
   • Manual Functional Testing
   • Quality gates

8. Deployment

   • Environments: DEV, QA, UAT, STAGING, PROD
   • SaaS / Hosted / On-Premise
   • Security checking

9. Documentation

   • User Guide
   • Developer Guide
   • Setup Guide
   • Integrations Description (API, RAML, Swagger links)

10. Project management

    • Project History (Kickoff meeting presentation, meeting meenutes etc)
    • Stakeholders
    • SDLC Description
    • Project Charter
    • Key customers
    • Roadmap
    • Project plan and task tracker
    • Risk Management
    • Communication Management
    • Assumptions and constraints
    • RACI
    • Reporting, Weekly status reports
    • Common/Recurring Tasks

11. System Administration

    • Accounts and logins
    • Installed programs/packages
    • 3rd party interfaces/equipment
    • Required Licenses & Maintenance agreements
    • Cron jobs
    • Port Mapping and Firewalls
    • System Administrator / DevOps Contacts

12. Maintenance

    • SLA
    • Disaster Recovery Plan
    • Change Management
    • Service Desk, incident escalation policies
    • Product Support flow
    • Monitoring
    • Logging

13. Contract and Budget

    • Contracts, Invoices, Promises
    • Suppliers and thier contacts
    • Vendors and thier contacts
    • Timesheets management policy

What to read?

Michael D. Watkins. The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter, Updated and Expanded. Link