The Handover Folder Starter

What's inside

• A ready-made runbook template with five proven sections
• Service overview: what it is, who owns it, where it lives
• On-call notes: how to reach it, and what the alerts mean
• Deploy and rollback steps, written for a calm newcomer
• A what breaks and why section with worked examples
• Format packs for Notion, Obsidian, and plain Markdown

Who it is for

If you own a service that mostly lives in your head — and you have a departure, a vacation, or a reorg on the horizon — this is the shortest path from “only I can run it” to “anyone on the team can.” No new platform, no lock-in, just plain files you own.

What makes it different

Most handover advice is a vague “write some docs.” The Starter gives you the exact shape of a runbook that works: five sections, in the right order, with prompts so you never face a blank page. Fill them in for one system and you have a real handover, not a wall of good intentions.

The method, in one breath

Every system gets one runbook: what it is, how to reach it, how to deploy it, how to roll it back, and what tends to break and why. Name things so a newcomer can guess them, link out to the real secrets store instead of pasting keys, and update the page the moment reality changes. Ten minutes to learn; it scales from one service to twenty without turning into a swamp.

Questions about The Handover Folder Starter

Do we need a specific tool?

No. It ships as plain Markdown plus a Notion-ready version and an Obsidian vault. Use whichever your team already lives in — the method is the same everywhere.

Is this just a folder of templates?

No. The value is the structure and the habit. The templates are a curated starting shape, not a pile you have to sort and prune.