What happens if we are gone tomorrow
The question is fair
We are a team of a few people. In most things that is an advantage: whoever sold the work writes the specification, and there are no four layers between us. In one thing it is a risk, and it would be silly to deny it: what happens if we are not here tomorrow.
The right answer to that is not “don’t worry”. The right answer is a list of what stays with you, independently of us.
What stays with you
The source code, in your own repository.
It is not held by us, and it does not have to be requested from us. The company-specific part (your templates, your processes, your automations) lives in your own private repo.
A written specification, phase by phase.
Not documentation written up afterwards, but the thing the work was built from. Whoever comes after us learns from it why each thing is the way it is.
Machine gates.
Quality does not depend on somebody remembering it. The gates are in the repo, they can be run and they fail when something breaks.
Audit log.
Logged operation: what happened, when and what triggered it. It is a habit that came out of our industrial and defence work, and this is exactly the situation it pays off in.
An open licence.
The tool your system was built with is public and MIT-licensed. If somebody else continues it tomorrow, they do not need permission from us, and they do not have to rewrite it.
What this does not solve
We are not claiming a handover is painless. Whoever takes it over has to read themselves in, and that takes time. What we are claiming is that there is something to take over, and that it is not inside one person’s head.
What to ask every supplier you have
Not only us. These four questions hold up with any supplier:
- 01
How many people know the system besides the one who built it?
- 02
What is written down independently of any person, and may I see it?
- 03
Where is the source code, and in whose repository?
- 04
If we part ways tomorrow, what do I take with me?
If there are no answers to these, that has nothing to do with the size of the company.