5 Best Practices When Offboarding Development Teams

Congratulations on finishing a successful development outsourcing project! Now it's time to disengage from your development team, but it's not as simple as bidding them farewell or kicking them off the Slack channel. A successful transition is often dependent on comprehensive documentation, communication, and internal training. 

Most development companies have a solid transition plan in place to ensure that their clients have all of the information they need to successfully take over and maintain new products. However, it’s equally important for your team to engage in the transition process. A proper offboarding protocol will smooth the transition and ensure that your in-house team has all of the tools they need to continue the project or maintain a new product. 

“My top recommendation for clients is to engage deeply with the documentation and knowledge transfer sessions we provide,” says Oleksandr Andrieiev, CEO and Co-Founder of Jelvix, an IT services and software development company. “We build these materials based on the highest service standards and best world practices to ensure clients can take ownership of the product confidently.” 

“It’s also crucial for clients to establish a dedicated internal team and maintain open communication during the final stages to ensure they fully understand the product’s architecture, especially regarding long-term management.”

Like many other development firms, Andrieiev’s team at Jelvix provides significant documentation and follows Project Management Professional (PMP) best practices to ensure a seamless transition and high standard of service. 

Your internal team also needs to be just as involved in the transition process. Following best practices allows you to retain important information that is essential to your project’s long-term success. 

In this article, we’ve outlined everything you need to keep in mind when offboarding a development team to be able to successfully maintain your new products. 

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Best Practices When Offboarding Development Teams

1. Ensure you have all documentation needed for a successful knowledge transfer
2. Grant access to internal team members
3. Validate key items in your contract
4. Establish communication channels going forward
5. Revoke access to project tools and systems 

Documentation for Knowledge Transfer In Offboarding

When you offboard a development team, you'll likely bring development and maintenance tasks in-house. It’s important to have a procedure in place to streamline knowledge transfer from your previous team to the internal one.

Documentation provides context and lets the internal team pick up where the previous one left off. Your in-house team can pick up where the previous team left off instead of starting at square one.

Types of Documents To Prepare

The primary documents you need are:

• Project Goals: This document highlights the purpose of the project and its key outcomes. Why did you start it, and what do you plan to accomplish?
• System Architecture: The information about all the technologies your team used to develop this project and how they're interconnected is present in this document. It also shows the underlying tech stack and how the project is structured.
• Codebase Overview: The internal team should also have a document that outlines the codebase and its main components, libraries, and services. Documentation should include in-line code comments with README files. These will be important for future codebase maintenance and debugging.

Have documentation of the internal and public APIs, their access routes, endpoints, return types, and any integration points in the codebase ready as well.

While these are just the core documents, they may not be enough for full knowledge transfer. It's also essential to prepare technical and process documents that outline the following:

• Development Processes: Workflows, branching strategies, release cycles, and version control practices are a part of this document.
• Deployment Procedures: Document how you built the continuous integration and deployment process, the automation scripts you used, and how to deploy them to production. Mention the testing strategies and the reasons behind them.

Your internal team will also need access control documents containing account access details. After you revoke access for the previous team, you also have to grant it to the new one. Share the passwords, tokens, API keys, and other authentication information with them using a safe method, such as a vault or a password manager.

How To Transfer Knowledge Across Teams

Great software development companies usually have a process in place to pass on information to their clients. “Our internal and external service codes, along with rigorous checks, ensure a smooth handover to the client,” Andrieiev says about Jelvix’s transition process. “This process starts with a comprehensive review of the final deliverables, followed by knowledge transfer sessions to help the client’s team manage the product effectively.” 

Yet, even with these processes in place, your team needs to engage with your development partner to prepare to take over the final product themselves. This means you shouldn’t simply hand over the documents to your team. Instead, set a Q&A session to answer questions and schedule regular check-ins to ensure your team is comfortable with the codebase and processes.

Create a handover checklist and a log of all pending tasks, responsibilities, and in-progress features the incoming team should know. If the project is still in intermediary stages, summarize the milestones the previous team achieved. Also, specify ongoing issues or challenges the internal team may encounter.

It also helps to create a knowledge base that includes common issues and their solutions, frequently asked questions, known bugs and workarounds, and troubleshooting tips. Similarly, share the user guides for tools or platforms your outsourcing partner used. Remember to provide the internal team with change logs to familiarize themselves with recent version changes, bug fixes, or deprecated functionalities.

Grant Access to Internal Team Members

Following knowledge transfer, the next step in offboarding is granting your internal team access to the platforms and tools the outgoing team used. Make it clear who will take ownership of these processes now.

For example, you can assign a project manager to handle all aspects of the project. They can then determine who gets authorized access to the repositories and tools. The same personnel can ensure project knowledge is easily accessible to all parties:

• Create a shared drive or cloud storage to store all documents, codes, and other resources related to the project.
• Set up a project wiki or knowledge base where team members can access information and collaborate.
• Organize training sessions for internal team members to familiarize them with project processes and tools.

One option is to have someone from your former outsourcing partner's team conduct the training sessions to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the project. Alternatively, you can create video tutorials or recorded training sessions for internal team members.

How To End Your Development Partnership on a Positive Note

Your outsourcing partner likely worked as an extension of your team throughout the project. They also created valuable relationships with your internal team members. You'll want to disengage with them on a positive note.

Validate Key Items in Your Contract

Every partnership begins with a contract highlighting what each party is responsible for. Before concluding your partnership, ensure all parties validate each item in the contract has been addressed and fulfilled. Doing this prevents potential disputes, which can sour industry relationships.

Some items to check off are:

• Payments: Verify you made all payments. A physical or digital record of all payments made to the outsourcing partner is essential. If there are outstanding balances, make arrangements to settle them.
• Intellectual Property: The contract should address the rules around intellectual property. Verify all parties agree on who owns the intellectual property and what rights each party has to use it.
• Confidentiality: You don't want your company's data to be out in the open. Make sure all parties comply with the rules around handling confidential information.

Thank Your Development Partners

Let your outsourcing partner know you value their contribution to the project. Write a personalized thank-you note or email expressing your appreciation for their hard work and dedication. If face-to-face meetings are possible, you can also take them out for lunch or organize an informal get-together to show gratitude.

Don't forget about LinkedIn. After finishing successful projects, many companies share their experiences on the platform, appreciating the efforts put in by their development partners.

Take a moment to write a recommendation or endorse the skills of your outsourcing partner on LinkedIn, helping them build their professional reputation. They'll surely be grateful for this social proof.

Keep in Touch With Partners

For now, you may have partnered with a team for a one-off project. But you never know when you might need the same team's assistance again. Also, you may have questions about the system they've developed somewhere down the line.

Keep in touch with your outsourcing partners. You can follow them on social media, connect with them on LinkedIn, and add their contact information to your professional network. If you host industry or networking events, you can invite them to join and maintain a professional relationship.

Similarly, if they extend an invitation to any of their events, try to attend, even if it's just a virtual event. These small gestures go a long way in maintaining positive relationships with your outsourcing partners.

Provide Positive Feedback

Outsourcing partners often reach out to you for a short interview or testimonial. Many of these development agencies write case studies for their websites after finishing successful projects. They'll want you to review them based on their work. You should provide positive feedback about your partner's team on their preferred platform, whether LinkedIn or their website.

Revoke Access to Project Tools and Systems

First, revoke access to all project tools and systems the development team used. These include code repositories, task management tools, communication channels, testing and deployment tools, and any other systems used in the project.

Not completing this step properly risks unauthorized access to sensitive information, which could result in security breaches. Even worse, sensitive company data or intellectual property may fall into the wrong hands.

Ensure your security and IT teams are on it when you decide to offboard the development team. They should work closely with your outsourcing partner's IT team to ensure you revoke access at the appropriate time.

Remove Access to Communication Tools

Every organization has different preferences for the kind of communication tools they use. Some companies may use email, while others prefer chat platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams, while others use project management tools like Asana and Jira. Whatever the case, remove the development team's access to these tools.

Clear out all communication channels. Make sure you save important communication or documentation related to the project, though. This could come in handy for future reference.

Revoke Admin Permissions

When working with an outsourcing development partner, you may have to give them admin permissions for some tasks. For example, your development team may have access to your cloud hosting service as an administrator. To revoke their access, you must demote them from admin status. Do this for all relevant systems and platforms.

The last thing you want is for an ex-employee or partner to have access to critical systems with admin privileges. A good lesson to learn is from Verelox, a Dutch web host that suffered an outage after a former worker deleted all customer data. You want to avoid a similar fate for your organization.

End Personal Accounts

Like admin permissions, the development team may have access to certain platforms through their accounts. A common example is Google Drive, where they may have shared important project files.

Disconnect all these accounts from your company's systems. If you need help determining which accounts are linked, trace your onboarding process. It will show you which permissions or personal accounts you granted. You'll also need to inform your outsourcing partner so they can disconnect their team members' accounts from your systems.

Skipping this step may lead to a future data breach. A survey found that 20% of organizations have experienced a data breach because of a former employee. The best way to avoid this is by having a strict offboarding process in place.

Offboarding is an Important Step in Your Development Partnership

The shift from an external team to an in-house team can be chaotic if you don't manage it properly. Most importantly, the in-house team or new outsourcing partner should be aware of the project's scope and guidelines, particularly if it's ongoing.

A smooth offboarding is a must. You can achieve this by revoking your old partner's access to project-related accounts, creating sufficient documentation for your team to reference, and handing over all necessary resources for the project.

Amidst all this, don't forget about your former partner. Establish a positive relationship with them so that you can bring them back for a future project if needed. 

In the end, the entire process is about managing relationships. Remain professional but friendly with the offboarded team to significantly reduce the risk of data breaches and to maintain a positive working relationship for any future projects.