Handover Training

Training your team to run what we build, so you are not dependent on us to change a page.

What you get

Training so your team can confidently run what we build, without depending on us for every routine change.

A system nobody in your organisation understands is a liability, however well it was built. Handover is where a project either becomes yours or quietly becomes a dependency.

Who this is for

• Teams about to take on a newly built system
• Organisations who inherited something nobody was ever shown how to use
• Businesses paying a developer for changes their own staff could make
• Anyone whose one person who understood the system has left
• Companies where staff avoid a system because they are afraid of breaking it

What is included

• Sessions run on your actual system with your actual data, not a demonstration
• Training aimed at what each role needs, rather than a single session for everyone
• Written notes for the tasks people will not perform often enough to remember
• The administrative tasks: adding users, changing permissions, running reports
• What to do when something goes wrong, and what not to try
• A recording or reference material people can return to later

Training on the real thing

Generic training is forgotten because it is abstract. People remember what they did, not what they watched.

So sessions run on your system, doing the tasks those people will actually do, with their own records in front of them. Everyone leaves having done the thing at least once rather than having seen it done.

We also train for the awkward cases, not just the smooth ones. Anybody can be shown the version where nothing goes wrong. What people need is what to do when a customer needs refunding, a record was created twice, or something has clearly gone astray.

Different roles need different sessions

A daily user and an administrator need almost nothing in common.

The person entering work every day needs speed and confidence in a narrow set of tasks. The administrator needs to add users, adjust permissions and understand what a change affects. A manager needs the reports and little else. Putting all three in one session wastes most people's time and leaves each of them with a third of what they needed.

Writing down what people will forget

Some tasks happen once a year. Nobody remembers those, and they should not have to.

Those are the ones that get written down, in your own terminology, in the order the screens actually appear. Documentation that describes features is of little use. Documentation that walks through the annual task somebody has to do in eleven months is worth having.

How we work

Training is planned around who does what, so we ask about roles before scheduling anything.

We would rather your team stop needing us for routine work. That sounds like an odd thing for us to want, and it is not: organisations who feel in control of their systems ask for more ambitious work later, and organisations who feel trapped resent every invoice.

Questions we are often asked

Can you train us on a system you did not build? Usually. We would need to understand it first, and we will say if it is impractical.

What if staff turn over? That is what the written material and recordings are for. Fresh sessions can be run for new people.

How many people can attend? Enough that everyone can ask questions. Beyond that it stops being training and becomes a presentation.

Will we still be able to call you? Yes. The aim is that you do not have to for routine things, not that you cannot.