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Handing work over

How to hand work over

Four sentences in the message that assigns the work, and a fifth that costs fifteen seconds and saves more than the other four together.

Decisions this page is about, and where the line actually was

What the decision wasWhere you thought it ended, and where it didSteps
123456

Changing the wording on a customer-facing error message

4 → 1

It had been yours all along

Picking the library for the new parser

1 → 4

The architect had a standing view

Rescheduling the weekly review

2 → 2

Changing a database column type

1 → 1
Where you thought it endedWhere it actually endedMore room than you thoughtLess room than you thoughtYou had it exactly right
  1. 1Decide it alone and say nothing
  2. 2Decide it alone and mention it afterwards
  3. 3Check with one colleague first
  4. 4Check with the person who assigned it
  5. 5Needs a decision one level up
  6. 6Cannot be decided here at all

four decisions · one of them you had more room than you thought · one gave you less · two you had exactly right · the median gap was three steps on the scale

Four of the nine decisions counted on this site, two of them exact.

Say the constraint out loud

The first of the four, and the easiest. One sentence with a number, an enforcer and a reason, written in the message that assigns the work.

Name the person who can say no

The slot whose absence costs the most, and the one people are least comfortable filling. How to say it without it sounding like a warning about a colleague.

Pass on what was already tried

The only one of the four with no home outside somebody's memory. One line per attempt, with the reason it stopped, written where the work lives.

Say why, not just what

The purpose governs a hundred decisions nobody will review. One specific sentence, naming who asked and what they will do with it.

The one-page handover

All four slots in a single message, with a worked example and the three ways the format fails when people try to make it official.

Hand over the edge as well

A fifth sentence, and the one that saves the most time: what the receiver can decide alone, what needs a word, and what is not theirs.

A quarter of better handovers

Thirteen weeks, two habits and one measurement. What a realistic quarter of this looks like from either side, and what it is reasonable to expect.

If you only read one of these

For somebody who arrived here first: the claim, the four things, the two costs, and the shortest useful thing to do about any of it.

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