Boring technology, and the debt you write down
Familiar means familiar to the receiving team, not old. And the ledger records what the code cannot do, including the debt nobody chose.
6 min read
Transfer
Comprehension debt and the transfer that cannot happen
Understanding is measured on the receiving side, against named tasks. A team that passes acceptance and cannot explain why a rule change moved an outcome has not received the system.
5 min read
The credentials that outlive the engagement
Vendor accounts, service principals, API keys and cloud tenancy persist after the final invoice. Revocation is not one action, and absence from an inventory is not absence.
5 min read
Documentation-only handoff, and the three transitions that replace it
Shadowing, reverse shadowing, and pairing transfer different things in a required order. Delivering documents and confirming receipt are two records, and neither is evidence of use.
5 min read
No capacity, no skills, no budget, no interest
Four handover failures with four diagnostics and four remedies. A stalled transfer is an outcome, and it does not identify its own cause.
5 min read
Comparability, not documentation: how pharmaceutical technology transfer proves a handover
A regulated transfer completes when the receiving site independently reproduces the specified result against criteria agreed in advance. Assisted and unassisted execution answer different questions.
4 min read
Phoenix pay, HealthCare.gov, and NPfIT read through a transfer lens
Three heavily documented programmes, re-examined for one question: what was handed over, to whom, and against what evidence. Plus the limits of reasoning from cases at all.
5 min read
Snagging lists, defects liability, and readiness ladders
Construction separates practical completion from final acceptance and holds the builder liable across the gap. Four disciplines stage readiness; software handover has no equivalent structure.
5 min read
Sometimes the correct answer is never to transfer
The structure assumes handover is the goal. Where the receiving organisation has no path to the capability, forcing a transfer produces an orphan with an owner's name on it.
5 min read
The receiving team is the deliverable
Invert the frame: the software is the byproduct and the capability is the product. Every practice that eases transfer is a training programme with an artifact attached.
5 min read
The run-cost handoff nobody scheduled
A transferred system arrives with a bill and no budget line, because the fiscal year that funded the build did not fund the operation. Six things move on six different dates.
5 min read
Transition assistance clauses: the exit you negotiate at the start
Termination for convenience is a settlement mechanism, not a free exit. And staff are participants with rights, not artifacts that transfer with the repository.
4 min read