Hand-over
A hand-over is the point in a process where work, information or responsibility passes from one person, team or system to the next. Hand-overs are a common place for processes to lose time and information, because what the sender considers finished and what the receiver needs are rarely agreed explicitly.
What is a hand-over?
Hand-overs happen between departments (sales to engineering), between shifts, between people and systems, and between a person leaving a role and their successor. On a swimlane diagram, every arrow that crosses a lane is one.
The most effective improvement is usually simple: agreed hand-over criteria that say what “complete” means — which information, in which form, checked by whom — and the receiver's right to send incomplete work back.
Not to be confused with knowledge transfer, which moves a person's knowledge to others over time. A hand-over passes one piece of work; handing over a role includes knowledge transfer.
Why it matters for SMEs
For example: sales passes an order to work preparation without the verbal agreement about a special finish. Everyone did their part, and the problem only surfaces at delivery — when the salesperson who made the promise is on holiday.
For SMEs, hand-overs often work because long-serving people fill the gaps from memory. When those people leave, the gaps become visible all at once.
Hand-over in the MentX approach
MentX captures how your company really works: the knowledge of your key people and the processes they run. We offer both a hands-on service approach — mapping your processes and capturing the knowledge behind them, from meetings, workshops and a guided intake — and our own personality-aware knowledge base, with full source attribution, in your own Knowledge Space. We build on the tools you already use and add best-practice solutions where they fit.
Hand-over criteria are captured per step, and with operational excellence they become part of the routine the team follows. See turn a process map into an operating routine.