Handover and Continuation

An important responsibility of you and your team once you've delivered your short course is to consider how the course will live on and what needs to be documented and handed over if you are passing on delivery responsibility to a new team.

Handover takes two forms:

• from 'project phase' to 'business as usual', where you have got to grips with what it takes and how it's done, and you deliver the short course the following year as a repetition (with necessary changes)
• one team to another, where you hand over the reins to a succeeding organiser and coordinating team. Where this happens, you need to let UWC International know, so we can direct all future communications to the new organiser.

A good handover is a vital piece in making your short course live on and should to be managed carefully.

Transitioning the first short course you deliver to 'business as usual' is arguably less challenging. However, there's a risk that data and information is not logged effectively and relies on one person's memory and knowledge. You should log important information and documents etc. to ensure that the course can run, even if there are unforeseen changes to the short course team structure.

Handing over to a new team requires up-skilling and transferring knowledge. To support this, you can:

• Establish a common 'data environment' - log what needs logging in a short course plan.
• Work with the new organising and coordinating team to ensure the right people are being trained at the right time, in the most effective manner, to support the transfer of knowledge and responsibility.
• Produce documents that are meaningful and useful to your organising successor - work out what needs handing over and what doesn't.

The Association for Project Management carried out a study to discover how we can hand over projects better, and their full report can be viewed below.