Transition Plan Nirvana
I have the responsibility of creating a smooth transition for projects I have worked on for the last two years. Such is life in the world of a consultant, when your engagement comes to an end before you are able to finish a multi-year set of projects. This isn’t an easy time, there is the emotional involvement of projects that I have birthed, cared for, fed, etc. and now must transition to new PM’s. Regardless of reasons and emotions the I must do a good job and effectively transition these projects. This led me to dust off an old transition plan, do a brainstorming session with a colleague, and see how close I could come to the nirvana of all transition plans.
The basics in a transition plan include the obvious: what, when, where, how and who. But it also includes dates (we are project managers after all), estimates for completion, regular meetings to attend, PMO governance, acronyms, links to documents and shared files, etc. the plan can get quite exhaustive. But the core is knowing who is doing what today and who will be doing what tomorrow. Responsible and accountable becomes critical to document for every in flight task.
But how do you articulate to someone new the things they don’t know, the sink holes that have the potential to swallow them alive? That was a challenge I needed to solve for. It’s one thing to tell a new PM that you need to process a statement of work with one of your suppliers; but conveying all the details about language choice to capitalize the labor, the fact that procurement prefers deliverable-based SOWs as opposed to time and material SOWs, that one sourcing manager is hyper-critical, and another is super-duper slow. These nuances help a PM experienced with procedures better predict a potential delay, creating a risk in advance to monitor, or escalate to leadership for acceleration as needed. I thought long and hard about how to help someone new understand those details.
Ultimately I can’t. Those types of details come with experience and personal interactions – the type that can only come with time. While I want to set up the new program manager to be successful I can only do so with the basics. Tasks, Roles, Responsibilities, Dates, Artifacts, and of course a section for my personal notes. My notes are robust and I cannot help but hope they serve my successor well. I will be available for questions of course, but just like a baby learning to walk, there will be some unexpected crashes as the new manager takes over and learns to walk on their own. I can only be responsible for providing the best foundation and information possible and hope the new Program Manager is off and running before you know it.