Support Hand-Off After Go Live

The hand-off after a project go live is not the finish line. As a Technical Project Delivery Lead, I've seen projects go live successfully; only to struggle weeks later because the transition to operations wasn't treated with the same rigor as the build itself.

Here's how I approach it differently....

I treat the BAU (Business As Usual) transition as a project deliverable. That means it gets planned, resourced, and executed, not improvised on the way out the door.

Before go-live, I make sure three things are in place:

A run-book or operations guide the team can actually use. Not a document that collects dust, but a practical reference for real scenarios.

Monitoring and alerting confirmed and tested. If ops can't see what's happening, they can't support it.

A defined support model that specifies who owns what, what the escalation path looks like, and what's in scope for each team.

I also run structured knowledge transfer sessions to pass on not just the what, but the why behind key decisions. That context is what operations teams need most and what delivery teams most often forget to share.

Finally, I always build in a formal hypercare period (typically 2 to 4 weeks) with elevated support and a clear exit criteria. We don't walk away when the calendar runs out. We hand off when the team is ready.

A delivery team's job isn't done when the solution is built. It's done when the organization can sustain it without them.

Authored by: Maria Duncan

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mariaduncane