Kei Ito, Hironori Washizaki, Joseph Yoder, Yoshiaki Fukazawa, “More Handover Solution Patterns,” 6th Asian Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (AsianPLoP 2017), Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, March 12-13, 2017.

The lifecycle of large software systems inevitably includes personnel changes. Most business people are familiar with the concept of a handover, but issues with handovers became apparent in Japan when many people from the Baby Boomer Generation retired simultaneously in 2007. Although effective handovers are crucial for seamless business operations during personnel changes, the preferable elements for a handover are ambiguous and not well researched, motivating our research. By analyzing anti-patterns, we note handover solution patterns to mitigate problems. However, our solution patterns may not be complete. Since our pattern language is familiar to many business people, we held workshops to find potential pattern seeds. The workshop participants suggested 22 new handover solution patterns. Three of which were suggested by multiple groups: Ability check, Pair working, and Matching the knowledge. Ability check evaluates the successor’s ability to prevent a handover failure due to lack of ability of the successor. Pair working is used to avoid handover altogether by assigning more than two people to the same job. Matching the knowledge avoids misunderstanding knowledge by successor by filling up the gaps between predecessor’s explanation and successor’s understanding.