Short answer
Project handover is the transfer of a finished system and the knowledge needed to run it: production access, hosting and domain accounts, environment variables, deployment steps, and documentation of how the parts fit together. What is transferred, and on what terms, is set by the contract rather than assumed.
Also called: Handover, Client offboarding, Transition to client
The complaint clients repeat is rarely about code. It is about a live site whose domain sits in a former developer’s registrar account, analytics nobody can log into, and a hosting bill charged to an email address that no longer receives mail. Preventing that is procedural: agree a written handover checklist at the start, list every account and credential the system depends on, and register those accounts in the client’s name from day one rather than transferring them at the end.
Source code and intellectual property are a separate question, settled by the agreement rather than by convention. Terms differ between studios: some transfer ownership on final payment, some grant a licence to use the software, some price a code transfer as an add-on to the build. None of those is unusual. The mistake is not choosing one but leaving the point undiscussed until launch, when it gets settled by whoever holds the accounts rather than by what either side intended.
Common questions
What should a handover include?
At minimum: administrative access to hosting, domain, DNS, database, analytics and any third-party services; the environment variables and deployment steps needed to release a change; and documentation of how the pieces connect. What happens to source code and intellectual property depends on the contract, so it belongs in the agreement rather than in the final week.
Where this comes up in our work
Related terms
User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
User acceptance testing is the stage where the people who will actually use a system verify it against the agreed requirements before launch, working through real scenarios on a staging environment.
Staging Environment
A staging environment is a private copy of a live system, running the same code and configuration, used to test changes before they reach customers.
Technical Debt
Technical debt is the future cost of a shortcut taken now: code that works but is structured for speed rather than for change.
Custom Software vs Off-the-Shelf Software
Custom software is built for one organisation’s specific process; off-the-shelf software is a finished product many organisations subscribe to, such as Shopify or QuickBooks.
Reading definitions because you are scoping a project? Skip ahead and just ask.