Software takeover (handover)
Moving an existing app to a new developer or team: access, code, infrastructure and the knowledge in people’s heads.
A takeover usually starts with an inventory: who owns the domain, the cloud and store accounts, where secrets live, how to build and deploy, what breaks often. The code is the easy part; accounts registered to a former contractor and undocumented manual steps are what block releases. A good handover ends with the new team deploying a small change on its own.
Related terms
- Technical debt: Shortcuts in code and design that speed up delivery now and make every later change slower until they are paid back.
- Runbook: A short document that tells someone else how to run a system: where it lives, how to deploy, how to recover.
- Vibe coding: Building by prompting and accepting the result without reading the code closely.
