Guide
How to create a project handoff
Most handoffs fail in the same way: the person leaving writes what they remember, and the person arriving needs what they did not think to write down.
How do you hand off a project properly?
Gather the project's real sources first, then write only the orientation paragraph. Extract people, decisions, dates and open items from those sources, correct what the extraction got wrong, and test the result against the questions the incoming owner will actually ask. Hand over the source-backed context, not a summary of your memory.
The order matters. Authors who write first anchor on their own narrative and then retrofit evidence. Authors who gather first discover the decisions they had forgotten.
What goes wrong
- Chronology instead of current state — the reader wants where it stands, not how it got here.
- Ownership implied rather than named, so open items quietly become nobody's.
- Decisions recorded without dates, so nothing indicates what superseded what.
- Evidence named but not attached, forcing the successor to hunt for it.
- The handoff written the afternoon before the author leaves.
The method
- Step 1
1. Inventory the sources
Statement of work, plan, status updates, the decision emails, the retro notes, the budget. If it changed the project's direction, it counts. Aim for the ten that matter, not the hundred that exist.
- Step 2
2. Write the orientation paragraph
What this project is, where it stands, and what happens next. One paragraph. This is the only substantial prose the handoff needs from you.
- Step 3
3. Let extraction do the structure
People, decisions, open items and dates come out of the sources far more completely than they come out of memory.
- Step 4
4. Correct, do not rewrite
Fix wrong roles, add ownership the documents never stated, resolve stale dates. Every correction you make is a question your successor will not have to ask.
- Step 5
5. Test with the question set
Below. Any unexpected unknown means a source is missing.
- Step 6
6. Hand it over live
Walk through it together once. Their first three questions tell you what the handoff still lacks.
What a complete handoff covers
Orientation
- What this is
- Current state
- What happens next
- Who to escalate to
People
- Each person's role
- What they own
- Who approves what
- Relationship notes that matter
Decisions
- What was decided
- When
- Why
- What it superseded
Open work
- Item, owner, next action
- Blocked items and the blocker
- Fixed dates
See it filled in
The example Briefs show completed handoffs across several kinds of work.
Open an example BriefThe seven-question test
Ask the handoff these. If it cannot answer one, it is not finished.
- What is this and where does it stand?
- Who owns what?
- What has been decided, and when?
- What is open, and who owns each item?
- What are the fixed dates?
- What is the biggest risk right now?
- Where did that answer come from?
Verification before you hand over
- Every decision has a date and a source.
- Every open item has a named owner, not a team.
- Anything you know but never documented has been added as pasted context.
- Conflicts between two sources are left visible rather than silently resolved.
Handoff checklist
- Sources gathered before writing began.
- Orientation paragraph written.
- Every person has a role and an ownership line.
- Every decision dated.
- Every open item owned.
- All seven test questions answered.
- Live walkthrough completed.
- Successor's first three questions folded back in.
Common questions
- What information belongs in a Brief?
- Include the material that answers the questions the recipient will actually ask: who decides what, what has been agreed, what is still open, what the timeline is, and where the numbers came from. Source documents, decision emails, status notes and the current financial model matter more than polished summaries.
- How does a Brief work?
- You add sources, Brieflin extracts the structure, you review and correct what it understood, then you publish one link. Recipients open the link without an account and ask questions in plain language. Each answer is generated only from your sources and cites the passage behind it. You can revoke the link at any time.
- How is Brieflin different from a document?
- A document answers the questions its author thought of. A Brief answers the questions the recipient actually has, because they can ask. The document is still useful as a source — Brieflin reads it and keeps it as evidence — but the recipient no longer has to find the one paragraph that matters to them.
Review before publish
Correcting the extraction is the step that makes the handoff trustworthy.
What is a Brief?