Design the handover before the first release.

Picture the next person on a difficult morning

A scheduled workflow has stopped. The person who built it is unavailable, and the report is due. What would the internal team need to see first?

That question shapes our design sprint. The client owns the workflow design outright, including the decisions behind it, and can take it to another builder. Ownership begins before development.

Leave a map someone can follow

We build inside the client’s Microsoft, AWS or Google tenant. A practical system map shows the sources, processing steps, approvals and owners there. The IT team has no separate AI Alchemy platform to maintain.

Keep a short record of consequential choices: why a platform was selected, why a step uses a model, and why a particular action needs review. Future maintainers can revisit a decision more confidently when they understand its original constraints.

Make the runbook answer real questions

A runbook should help someone recognise what is happening and choose the next safe action. Include the ordinary run, likely failures, and the point where the operator should stop and escalate.

Google’s SRE guidance describes troubleshooting as a process of gathering evidence and testing explanations. We apply that thinking to handover: make the system observable enough that someone can investigate rather than guess.

• Where can I see the current run and its inputs?
• What does a successful result look like?
• Which steps can be retried, and what could be duplicated?
• How do I pause the workflow or return to a known state?
• Who owns a source, a business rule, and the application?

Practise ownership together

Walk through a routine run and a failure with the receiving team. Let them find the instructions and explain the next step. The places where they hesitate are useful feedback for both the documentation and the interface.

For AI systems, include the evaluation examples, model responsibilities, source controls, and the process for changing them. A handover is complete when the agreed owner can operate the agreed scope and knows where to go for help. Plan that outcome alongside the first release.