Handoffs are not a relay race

The relay metaphor is the most damaging thing anyone believes about handoffs. In a relay, the baton is complete. Every runner knows exactly what it is, there is nothing to interpret, and the only failure mode is dropping it.

Work is not a baton. What gets handed over is an artefact, and what does not get handed over is everything the first team knew while producing it: which parts of the requirement were firm and which were guesses, what the customer said that did not make it into the brief, which shortcut was taken and why, what will break if the next team changes a particular thing.

None of that is in the artefact. It is in the head of the person who made it, and the handoff moves the artefact only.

So the test for a handoff is not whether the work arrived. It is whether the receiving team can list the three things most likely to be wrong with it. If they cannot, they have an object and no understanding, and they will discover the understanding by getting it wrong.

The fix is small and specific. Attach to every handoff a short statement of what is uncertain, what was assumed, and what the receiver must not change without asking. Three lines. It is the cheapest intervention in this entire volume.