When an experienced colleague leaves, files may remain while important context disappears. Knowledge preservation starts before search: what is documented, which source is authoritative and who takes responsibility?
chifty Knowledge supports access to approved documented information. Unspoken experience does not appear automatically; it first needs to be captured in conversations, notes or suitable documents.
Separate documented knowledge from personal experience
Work instructions, project decisions and technical documents can form a knowledge base. Exceptions, customer history and informal practices require deliberate handover.
Collect the questions a successor needs to answer and assign an authoritative source, rather than producing only a file list.
- Which tasks depend on one person?
- What decisions were made, and why?
- Which documents are current?
- What information may the successor access?
Example: handing over a long-running project
This fictional example distinguishes an archive from a useful handover.
Fictional handover question
- Fictional source
- Project record: customer A follows maintenance approval V3 due to a documented special configuration.
- Request
- Why does customer A use a different maintenance sequence?
- Example result
- Task: maintain customer A. Reason for exception: special configuration. Current source: approval V3 and maintenance instruction. Owner: project lead. Open question: will the exception still apply after the planned modification?
- Human review
- Ask the successor to trace the answer through approved sources and flag missing knowledge.
Four practical handover steps
Identify critical tasks and questions, choose current sources, record missing explanations and grant appropriate access.
Then ask the successor to handle representative cases without informal help. Return unresolved questions to the responsible specialist. This tests whether the knowledge is usable.
Maintain permissions and ownership
A handover does not require company-wide access to everything. Separate project documents, personal content and confidential agreements. Changes to roles and access belong in the normal offboarding process.
Define the documented sources for the pilot. Include conversation, audio or video capture only when the specific installation supports it and its use has been approved.