Training that outlasts the consultant

I have given the handover session maybe sixty times. Two hours, a shared screen, someone recording it for the people who could not make it. I used to think it went well when nobody had questions at the end. It took me an embarrassing number of years to work out that nobody had questions because nobody had tried anything yet.

What I was teaching was the system. Which button, which screen, which order. That knowledge has a half life of about one product update. What lasts is the reasoning: why the approval sits there and not two steps earlier, why we left that field free text instead of a dropdown. A person who has the reasoning can find the new button on their own.

So I have stopped doing the session at the end. Now the last third of the build belongs to their team, with me watching and saying very little, which I find harder than it sounds. They write the runbook, because whoever writes it is whoever remembers it. I correct it afterwards, and that hour is worth more than the two hours ever were.

The only review I trust is the third month. If it is quiet, the design was right. When it is not quiet, and it sometimes is not, that is not a training failure. It means I built something that needed me in it, and I would rather find that out in month three than in year two.

MMB