Hypercare and warranty period
Hypercare is extra support right after go-live; the warranty period is the time the vendor fixes its own defects for free.
During hypercare the team that built the system watches it closely, answers faster than normal support and fixes what real users find. The warranty covers defects against the agreed specification, not new requests or problems caused by changes the buyer made. After both end, support continues under a retainer or an SLA, or the system is handed over.
Related terms
- UAT (user acceptance testing) and sign-off: The final check where the buyer’s own users test the delivered software against agreed criteria and formally accept it, which often triggers payment.
- Retainer: A fixed monthly fee for a vendor’s availability or a pool of hours, typical for maintenance, support and ongoing advice.
- SLA (service level agreement): A contract that defines availability, response and fix times per priority, and what happens when they are missed.
- On-call rotation (on-call rota): A schedule, also called a rota, that names who responds to production alerts outside normal work, with an escalation path if that person does not answer.
- Knowledge transfer and exit plan (handover): Handing a system from the vendor to the buyer or a new team: code, access, documentation, runbooks and time with the people who built it.
