The Handover Quick-Start

What you get

• The one-page handover checklist, ready to copy
• The runbook skeleton — six sections already laid out
• The owner · access · steps pattern that makes a runbook followable
• The one habit that keeps a runbook current
• No email required — it is yours immediately

Why one page is enough

You do not have a documentation problem so much as a starting problem. The blank page is the hard part. This checklist removes it: a short list of what a good handover contains, and a runbook skeleton with the sections already laid out, so you just fill in what you already know.

What to do with it

Pick the one system you would least like to explain over the phone on a day off. Copy the skeleton into whatever you already use — Notion, Obsidian, a plain file — and spend twenty minutes answering its prompts. That is a real runbook, done. Tomorrow, do the next system.

A runbook, not a secrets vault

As you fill it in, hold one line bright: knowledge only, never secrets. If a step needs a token or password, name where it lives (“the deploy key is in our secrets manager under `service/deploy`”) instead of pasting it. Your runbook stays safe to share, search, and read at 2am.