Portfolio handover
Inheriting six live client engagements in one week
A departing manager, six active accounts, and clients who found out by email. I built a handover pack per engagement and a generic pack per engagement type, so the next handover would not depend on me either.
- Transferred with a written pack each, not a call each
- 6 accountsTransferred with a written pack each, not a call each
- Generic packs so the format survives the next departure
- 5 engagement typesGeneric packs so the format survives the next departure
- Every pack opens on what is wrong, not on what was delivered
- Red and amber firstEvery pack opens on what is wrong, not on what was delivered
The client
The delivery assurance function of an enterprise software vendor, covering implementation projects run both by its own teams and by partners, across banking, telecommunications, investment and food-service clients in four regions.
The engagement
A portfolio handover executed in days, then formalised into a reusable handover format and published behind role-separated access.
The problem
When a project manager leaves, the knowledge leaves with them and the clients notice before the organisation does. The usual response is a week of handover calls, which transfers roughly what the outgoing person happens to remember on the day, in whatever order it occurs to them — and produces nothing reusable when it happens again.
What I did
I wrote the handover instead of attending it. Each engagement got a pack in a fixed shape: an executive summary a leader can read in two minutes, the live indicators, the red and amber items placed at the top rather than buried, the stakeholder map on both sides, the workstreams, the open risks and the immediate next steps. Fixing the shape matters more than the content — six packs in one format can be compared, prioritised and reviewed, while six free-form documents are six separate reading tasks. Then I generalised it: packs by engagement type, so an implementation, a rescue, an advisory engagement, a support arrangement and a closure each have a template with the questions that type actually raises. The whole thing went behind an authenticated site with role separation, so leadership saw the portfolio view and the incoming manager saw the working detail, without either audience wading through the other's material.
What was built
A handover pack per engagement — executive summary, key indicators, red and amber callouts, stakeholder map, workstreams, risks and next steps — plus generic packs by engagement type covering implementation, rescue, advisory, support and closure, published through an authenticated site where leadership and the incoming manager each saw only their half.
On the table at the end
- Six per-engagement handover packs
- Generic packs by engagement type: implementation, rescue, advisory, support, closure
- Authenticated command-centre site with role-separated views
What it changed
Turned an unplanned departure into a documented transfer: each of six accounts handed over with an executive summary, live indicators, red and amber callouts, stakeholders, workstreams, risks and next steps — and a generic pack per engagement type so the format outlived the event.
How it ran
- 01
Fix the shape first
One pack format across all six, so the portfolio can be compared and triaged rather than read end to end.
- 02
Lead with what is wrong
Red and amber callouts at the top of every pack — the opposite of a status report written to reassure.
- 03
Map both sides of the table
Client stakeholders and internal owners named per engagement, because a handover without relationships is a document, not a transfer.
- 04
Generalise by engagement type
Implementation, rescue, advisory, support and closure each get a template, so the next handover starts from a form rather than a blank page.
- 05
Separate the audiences
An authenticated site with role separation — leadership sees the portfolio, the incoming manager sees the working detail.
Other work
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- Health tech
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A care-coordination platform changed hands mid-flight. Two weeks to take the credentials, audit what we had inherited, fix what was broken and stand up an environment we controlled.
- Knowledge operations
Turning sixty-five gigabytes of drive dumps into context an assistant can use
AI assistants are only as good as the context you can hand them, and the context was spread across drives, chats and mailboxes. I turned it into a structured base where every past engagement is a self-contained dossier.
Something similar on your plate?
Thirty minutes, no deck. I will tell you whether it is worth doing at all.