Keep Yourself Focused On Your Goals

It takes courage of conviction to focus on your goals even under most trying circumstances

 You Don't Need To Apply Rocket Science 

Never judge others because when you indulge yourself in judging others, your focus gets diverted from your goals.It is like driving your car at the top speed with your eyes off the road, and you do not need to apply the rocket science for knowing the consequences of such behavior.

Burning Desire To Achieve Keeps You Focused

It takes courage of conviction to desist from such acts but more than anything else it is the burning desire to achieve your goals that helps you keep yourself focused on your goals even under most trying circumstances.

Sanjay V Sharma

Not Hired by Campus Recruiters? Don't Get Disheartened Take Charge of Your Career

You Must Reflect on the Ground Realities, Work on Yourself and Take Charge of  Your Career

Improve Your Self Awareness

If you are not hired by the team of corporate recruiters that visited your campus, there is no need to get disheartened but to understand the reasons , why you were not shortlisted by the recruiters? This is an essential exercise in self awareness. 

Understand the Underlying Nuances
Not getting shortlisted by the campus recruiters doesn't necessarily mean that you are not good enough.Please do not register this notional opportunity loss

 on your psyche as a serious nondelible negative remark regarding your persona.You must understand the underlying nuances or else you may end up misconstruing the whole communication. Be aware of the various possibilities for the decision by the recruiters, these are a few of the likely scenarios. By being aware of these possibilities ,you need to intelligently reflect on the ground realities, work on yourself and take charge of your career

• You are Not a Best Cultural Fit for Hiring Organization

Based on your background information provided by you to the recruiters during the interview, the recruiters inferred that you are not a best cultural fit for their organization and there is a high probability of compatibility issues few months down the line, where the training & recruitment costs would go down the drain.The better option for them ,in this case, is to find a better suitable match having cultural compatibility with the organization under consideration. Considering this reasoning you need to appreciate that you are what you are and based on your background there are different but right kind of organizations suiting you, which are a better cultural fit for your background profile.

• You Exceed the Required Profile

You are an overkill, where you exceed the required profile and seem to be of a bigger size than the chair for the present role on offer. The recruiters assessed you to be far superior than the profile required for the role at hand and decide against hiring you. This decision of the recruiters is emanating from their act of drawing the balance between being fair with both the their organization, by keeping a check on their recruitment & training costs, as well as the candidate, by respecting the right of the high calibre candidate for better employment opportunities as suitable, than what is currently on offer. 

• You are More Suited to Different Industry or Job Profile

The personality traits of the required candidate profile may vary from one industry to the other. The job in banking sector may require different set of traits as compared to those required in a media organization. Therefore you need to keep trying with the your best efforts and may also take help of the experts in developing & mastering the traits required by the job profile in the industry of your choice.Going by this logic if your aptitude and competence are more suited to a different industry than the one for which the recruiters are hiring, then the recruiters might decide to leave you for the other industry.

• You are Out-Performed by Competition

Although you are a perfect match for the offered job role, you scored well enough to qualify the interview but due to limited available vacancies you could not make to the top few slots as you scored less than your competing colleagues.You are out performed by the competition, and you must utilize this failure as a learning experience for you to ensure that you are better prepared by finding out the best possible ways of keeping your best foot forward and delivering a stronger performance during the next interview.

• You Failed to Create a Positive Impact During Interview

You have the right mix of attributes required for the job role in discussion but you failed to create a positive impact during the interview. This could be due to incorrect etiquette, improper posture ,casual dressing, inadequate grooming, inappropriate communication, unfavorable first impression  or negative attitude inadvertently exhibited by you during the interview. You need to very closely & objectively reflect on the interview proceedings  to gather a clear understanding of what were the things you did right and also critically evaluate what went wrong, which you could have done better and ensuring these shortcomings are eliminated during the forthcoming interviews. 

• You May be Lacking Knowledge,  Skills,  Aptitude or Attitude

You may be lacking in either one or more of the knowledge, skills, aptitude and attitude required for the job role under consideration, If this is the case then you need to reflect on your self by conducting an in-depth SWOT analysis & identify your weaknesses to facilitate self improvement for ensuring that you are aware of your strengths and weaknesses. When you are aware of your strengths and weaknesses, you can draw great mileage by playing to your strengths ,chalking-out an action plan and working towards eliminating your weak areas so that you are better prepared for each progressive opportunity.

The author of this post is a Consultant & Trainer and in case of any assistance ,he may be reached at email ;sanjaysharma_delhincr@rediffmail.com , mobile; 9811578963
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Sanjay Sharma

Innovation & Survival: Two Sides of the Same Coin

                                                 CHALLENGE THE STATUS QUO FOR INNOVATION                      Photo CreditDabra Larson

Business is a Two Way Street, Either Innovate or Perish

Any business organization is a highly complex system that is comparable to advanced machinery. Like a machine it has multiple components, interacts with the environment in which it operates, needs to be operated by skilled people, exists for a specific purpose and consists of intertwined internal processes culminating into intricate input-output cycles. It must be observed here that any machine needs to be upgraded to an improved version over a period of time. This is necessitated by a variety of factors including but not limited to emergence of a better technology, enhanced ease of operation, wider service objectives, increased competition, changes in the user tastes & preferences, etc. This up-gradation is necessary for the machine to remain relevant to the users it is designed to serve or there is a clearly defined path to oblivion by being labelled as obsolete. And the business world is no different, as we have numerous examples of huge businesses with highly successful product categories which were doing very well at one point in time but they failed to adapt themselves to the dynamic environmental changes over a period of time. Today these businesses stand relegated to the annals of business history as their glory has diminished with time.

“One Best Way” Becomes Ineffective with Onslaught of Time

The businesses must take a cue from this point that if they have been successful during the past years or decades the credit goes to their struggle which led to the winning innovation responsible for their success during their start-up phase, where they could come out with an effective strategy which worked very well for them in addressing the specific set of environmental forces prevailing at that point in time. As the time passes by, changes happen in the market, competition, technology, customer preferences, etc, which render the erstwhile success strategy redundant, it ceases to add any value in the changed circumstances, on the contrary it gets in the way of the progress of the business, because the executive team is overtly obsessed by the "one best way" of doing the things as that had always worked in the past. The real problem is the obsession of the executive team with the "one best way" of doing things. But they miss out on re-validating their set of assumptions which were deeply embedded into the development of that "one best way". The “one best way” which earlier worked for the business loses its relevance in the context of the changing business realities where the earlier assumptions do not hold any ground, as these assumptions need to be questioned on a continuous basis to successfully address the challenges posed by the dynamic environmental uncertainties.

Businesses Must Innovate to Safeguard against Extinction

As there is a continuous need to carry out maintenance of a machine, similarly an organization must also be continuously monitored for any ailing divisions that may be requiring surgery or some other treatment. The emphasis must be laid on innovation, as the executive team needs to conduct in depth research to decipher the prevailing business trends and generate improved solutions to create value for their business organization. A very critical point to be noted here is the concept of preventive maintenance, where the catch is to proactively maintain the machine through continuous inspection and ensuring that the machine is kept in an efficient working state by carrying out proactive repairs before any actual work loss or breakdown occurs. Here if any complacency sets into the approach chosen by the executive team of the business organization, it necessarily overlooks the highly critical innovation through preventive maintenance resulting in guaranteed inefficiencies in conducting its business leading towards the impending organizational failure. As compared to the proactive preventive maintenance adopted for up-keeping the machines, the business organizations must also prevent the organizational break down by converting the challenges faced by them into opportunities through proactive preventive maintenance leading towards effective innovation. If the proactive preventive maintenance is not adopted by the business organizations then sooner or later an epidemic or a catastrophe hits them, putting them in a distressful situation, where getting into the fire-fighting mode is the only option left with them. In such a state of distress, it is quite natural for the business organization to shift its complete focus & energy from its core business objectives towards the fight against extinction, but with little chances of survival.

Innovative Mind Set: Key to Business Survival

Innovation is not necessarily a paradigm shift bringing about business disruption as it may come in multiple forms. For a marketing division it may be an act of identifying new uses its products can serve with an entirely untouched market segment, for the production team it may be an equivalent of a more efficient production process capable of delivering better quality in lesser time & cost, for a chip design organization it may be introduction of a more compact sophisticated design capable of delivering better value, reliability & speed as compared to the previous versions, etc. So a progressive organization needs to continuously challenge the status quo. Its executive team must be intelligently obsessed with the idea of innovation by identifying organizational challenges and converting them into opportunities. This innovative approach needs to be an organization wide culture for an exponential impact on the overall functioning and well being of the organization under consideration. It is a very widely known fact that the organizations which were considered very successful for a series of decades eventually became obsolete because they could not adapt themselves to their changing realities. The real challenge for the progressive businesses lies in continuously reinventing themselves through an innovative mindset to ensure that they remain relevant to the changing business landscape by re-validating their assumptions and redefining their new set of values, beliefs & assumptions on which their complete organizational competencies, strategies, effectiveness, success and long term survival are based.

Sanjay Sharma

EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE MODEL FOR BUILDING ETHICAL ORGANIZATIONS

Many Large Organizations Suffer from Rampage Unethical Practices

The problem with our world starts when people with vested interests get into positions of authority. Many large organizations suffer from rampage unethical practices conspired by a very small number of people in influential & authoritative positions. There are obvious undesirable fall-outs, for the stake holders, of not being able to check this menace before it manifests into volcanic eruptions causing shock-waves leading to ripples of panic & devastation right through the organization and beyond

Symptoms Exhibited by Suffering Organizations

Organizations suffering from the impact of unethical practices may exhibit symptoms including but not limited to clandestine predetermined customary commissions, nepotism, favoritism and unhealthy politics aimed at promoting the vested interests of few favorites at the expense of the organization as well as the other interest groups including all ethical actors putting them in a strongly disadvantageous position. Work cultures marred by this evil strangle creativity, innovation, justice, growth, motivation and prosperity. In all likely-hood such a trend plummet the organization towards a downward spiral of hopelessness, destitution & complete loss of focus on the organizational values and objectives

Recipe for an Ethical Organizations?

Solution lies in whole hearted adoption of these rich practices within the governance framework of your organization

1.       Unwavering commitment of the stake holders towards building an ethical organization

2.       Keeping aside a budget towards accomplishing “Ethics and Compliance”

3.       Organization wide dissemination of the code of conduct manual, detailing the definition of integrity violation for identification & prevention of corrupt practices

4.       Building complete transparency around the processes and systems of your organization

5.       Carefully structuring the whistle blower policy

6.       Conducting surprise inspections of the individual work stations 

7.       Benchmarking organizational costs with contemporary market practices & scenario through real time studies and researches

8.       Ensuring optimum frequency of intra organizational employee transfers in case of a single business entity and inter organizational employee transfers in case of a multiple business entity. This also takes care of the critical business areas such as business continuity planning by lining up future business leaders capable of shouldering bigger responsibilities of your organization.

9.       Making contribution towards Knowledge Management system an integral component of the employee KPI (key Performance Indicators) matrix

10.   Developing significant overlaps in the employee KPI matrices as a proactive measure towards implementing a strong checks & balances mechanism.

11.   Carrying out unexpected audits of the organizational processes

12.   Zero tolerance policy for integrity violation
13.   Continuous reviewing and updating of the  governance framework to keep it effective and relevant to the changing times

Sanjay Sharma

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT - TIMELESS & ALL PERVASIVE PARADIGM

Assume Complete Responsibility for Your Present Situation

Whenever you happen to experience an urge for challenging the status quo for reasons ranging from modifications in the personal goals to the observed deviations in the execution of your business plan, it is only wise to assume complete responsibility for your present situation, without even the faintest impression of any lesion to the external environment, people or factors around you. It is a great idea to assume 100% responsibility for your present situation, to be able to effectively handle these challenges. Hiding behind any person, circumstances or justifications is no solution. Instead getting in the middle and handling the bull by its horns by taking complete responsibility for the debacle is the only way out. As most of the people, you may like to trust with the responsibility of solving your problems, may not match the quality of self service solution that you are capable of producing for your pressing priorities

Focus On Continuous Improvement in Your Action Zone

Total quality management teaches us the importance of exploring new horizons by focusing on continuous improvement in our action zone. Please note that the emphasis here is not on being perfect, but on the contrary this is a system which believes in the capability of humans to learn from their mistakes leading towards continuous improvement. The other important tenet is the belief that whatever may be the level of excellence accomplished by you , it can always be improved further by identifying some flaw somewhere which can be rectified  to move from good to better , where best is yet to come. The beauty of this paradigm is that it is timeless and all pervasive with no exceptions

Generate a Win-Win Situation for All Concerned

For you to know that whether you have worked out the right solution, the basic test lies in generating a win-win situation for all concerned. The simple format for achieving this is to list down the systems that your solution is going to affect, then empathize with each element to understand weather the solution provided by you would be acceptable to you if you were in their shoes. All affirmative answers are an indication of your awesome solution which has the capacity of propelling you, in the right direction, from good to better.

Sanjay Sharma

SPIRIT OF NATIONALISM - SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, 360 DEGREE LEADERSHIP & PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS

  

Show The Path and Lead The Way

As a business do you realize the importance of your day to day conduct, in motivating and inspiring people, who come in your direct or indirect contact. There is no better way than modelling when it comes to showing the path and leading the way. In a scenario where technology, GDP, economy, innovation, education standard, living standard, industrial growth rate and most of the tangible parameters seem to be doing well, still we know that there is some-thing more that is needed to move the nation to a point where it can keep its head high and be self reliant in taking its own decisions rather than depending on others to support its cause. This is the time to redefine the concept of social responsibility as linked to the spirit of nationalism and 360 degree leadership through accomplishment of personal effectiveness

Align Your Own Work With That Of The Nation

Whether you may be in a job or business, it always pays to be effective in your role by being helpful to those around you. You must constantly focus your energy on the effectiveness with which you are contributing towards the goals of your department, organization or business. Healthy competition or complementing, the strengths of your co-worker – countrymen, must be the key word to watch for.  Delving deeper into this concept will make you align your own work with that of the nation as a whole. You need to understand that for your country to be stronger, it needs to possess more wealth, for the country to possess more wealth the countrymen must be productively employed to generate that wealth for your nation

Strengthen  The Society & Culture by Contributing Towards The True Spirit of Nationalism

The social responsibility must not be looked upon as a mere tool , only for gaining appreciation and meeting mandatory compliance norms, but this must also be a measure of setting up of right example and promoting brotherhood, harmony and nationalism amongst the people as and when they come in contact of your business. This is the only way to bear the torch of nationalism to a level where each torch in-turn ignites a multiple number, this continued process has the potential to transform the business landscape and strengthen the society & culture by contributing towards the true spirit of nationalism through personal effectiveness

Sanjay Sharma

CORRECT VALUE SYSTEM, PREREQUISITE TO ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

Is Incorrect Value System Affecting Your Business Performance?

Many a times the problems and difficulties faced by an organization are on account of not living its correct values. This anomaly could emanate from any of these causes

• ·           There are no clearly spelt-out organizational values.· 
•          The values are clearly written down but the behavior of your organization is not consistent with these values.·         
•      Value statement is flawed as it doesn’t reflect the correct values of the organization, thereby rendering all further implementation or evaluation efforts, an exercise in futility

All  Successful Businesses Live Their Correct Values 

Let’s look at the proactive solution to facilitate accomplishment of optimum organizational effectiveness, through identification, crystallization and implementation of the correct values by your organization. Being aware of the correct values of your organization is a very critical component and a key driver of the strategic, tactical or operational decisions made in your organization. Which means every worker on the shop floor, every field sales officer, every manager, every board member is aware of the organizational priorities. This facilitates uniformity in organization wide responses across different geographies, departments, hierarchies, business conditions, etc, leading towards the predictable service or product quality delivered to the vendors, suppliers and the internal as well as the external customers.

This clearly explains why the best of the organizations across the globe have a consistent track of the way in which they conduct their business. Implementation of clearly defined values lies at the heart of all successful organizations, whether local or global.

Check-list to Evaluate Whether Your Business Is Suffering From This Anomaly

1.     Do you receive frequent customer complaints regarding quality of the product/ service   delivered?
2.    Do you find that motivating your employees towards higher productivity levels is a big challenge?
3.    Have you noticed a lack of coordination between different departments/ teams in your organization      for even simplest activities?
4.        Despite your continued efforts you are not able to build a healthy brand image in the eyes of your customers?

If the answer to one or more of these questions is yes, then your organization needs to revise its value statement by identifying its correct values and ensuring that its behavior is consistent with these values for accomplishing organizational effectiveness.

For any assistance, you may write to us at  admin@successnsynergy.com  or visit our website  www.successnsynergy.com. It shall be our pleasure to assist you..

Sanjay Sharma

Keep Calm And Transition To A New Development Team

It is common for a software product to transition from one development team to another during its lifetime. Different stages of the product may call for a different type of development team: a consultancy to build the initial version, a solo freelance developer to maintain it, an in-house team to bring it to scale, or a professional designer to add some “pop”.

Despite how often this occurs, many non-technical founders and product owners find themselves unprepared and scrambling when the time comes to bring on the next team. This often results in an inability for the new team to make fast progress, wasted time, and frustration for everyone involved.

If this sounds like it could be you, either now or in the future, then you should be somewhat concerned. Luckily, we are going to walk through the steps you can take to prepare for this eventuality and make the transition as smooth as possible.

Passing The Torch: Onboarding A New Development Team

In this article, I will provide you with a checklist of items that will help you prepare for such a change. You will be getting to know your product on a more intimate level and gaining more control over all the various services and technologies that go into making it, which will empower you to onboard a new team with confidence and relative ease.

Passing the torch to new developers? Make sure the new team doesn’t get burned.

But what if you’re not replacing the whole team? Should you bother reading this?

Even if some of the previous team remains on board, they might not have all the answers and information needed for a smooth transition. Although they can provide continuity and aid in the process of transferring knowledge from the old team to the new, relying on incumbent team members is no substitute for the product owner taking charge and facilitating the transfer. In addition, failing to take charge might cause friction between old and new team members, or burden old team members with unnecessary tasks, forcing them to waste too much time communicating with new team members and resolving various issues.

Still, if some team members are staying on board, they can be an invaluable asset in your transition efforts. Consult with them, keep them in the loop and try to leverage their experience without inundating them with too many transition-related tasks. Do not expect them to do all the heavy lifting! That’s your job.

So without further ado, let’s dive in!

Gather Documentation

Freelance developers are often asked to jump into an existing codebase that they’ve never seen before. This is especially true regarding Toptal software engineers. Our goal is always to get up to speed as quickly as possible so we can start having a positive impact for our clients.

Having access to clear, thorough documentation about the project can dramatically accelerate the onboarding process, and help developers avoid pitfalls that can impede forward progress.

Good documentation needs to cover at least the following topics:

• Setting up a development environment - The first task for any newcomer is getting the application up and running on their own computers. The process for doing so varies between technologies. In general, it requires tasks such as getting the source code, setting up the database, installing dependencies, configuring the environment with API keys and credentials, importing sample data, and so on. Developers have a good idea of everything involved in this process within their respective fields, and should be able to adjust the details accordingly.
• Running the automated test suite - Seeing an application’s tests pass ensures that everything has been set up properly and that future changes are not breaking any of your existing features.
• Deploying to the staging and production servers - Updating the live application with the newest changes is a highly scripted process, and the order of those operations should be outlined step-by-step, as detailed as possible.
• Any other information that is relevant to a newly onboarded developer - Every application has its own set of quirks. Writing those down saves future teams a lot of wasted effort debugging issues that the previous team has already figured out how to deal with.

Good documentation is the cornerstone of any successful transition. Make sure your new team has everything they need.

Documentation should be written by a developer who has first-hand experience setting up the application and contributing to the codebase.

Before any transition occurs, request that the previous development team facilitates the transfer of knowledge by creating a resource that touches on the topics above!

If writing is not their strong suit, ask them to record one or more screencasts demonstrating the development environment setup, deployment, etc. Today there are even tools such as Vagrant and Docker which allow whole development environments to be packaged up and distributed to others. In essence, instead of giving someone directions on how to build a hammer, give them the hammer itself.

The litmus test for how comprehensive and effective a project’s documentation is is how quickly a new developer can get his or her development environment setup and running your application.

Understand Your Product

Having great documentation does not excuse you from needing to know the basics of your own product’s technology. As the owner of a software product, it is your responsibility to understand your application as best you can, even if you aren’t very technical.

No technical background? There's no excuse for failing to properly understand the building blocks of your project. It could cost you dearly.

The following questions are common, and you should be expected to know the answers without having to look them up:

• What technology stack does your application use? - There are many common application frameworks for the back-end and the front-end, and any new development team should have familiarity in the ones your application uses. Some examples of back-end web technologies are Ruby on Rails, Node.js, and Django. Some examples of front-end web technologies are React.js, Angular.js, and Ember.js.
• Where is it hosted? - Different web hosts have different deployment processes, which require varying levels of experience. In recent years, cloud technologies have created a number of new hosting options, and you’ll need to identify which particular one you are using and describe why it was chosen over the others.
• What is the development process? - Does your team use a particular source control management tool such as Git? If so, what is the process by which a new feature gets developed, tested, approved, and deployed? The process must be standardized, properly documented, and easy to replicate by newcomers.
• What third-party services does your application use? - Some applications are built on third-party services such as Shopify. Please keep in mind that reliance on third-party services is gradually increasing, and even if you currently don’t use any extra service, your project may decide to employ a third-party service sometime later.
• What platforms can your application run on? - Is your app a desktop application, web app, responsive mobile website, native iOS application, native Android application, or anything else? Is it running on several different platforms? Which platform is your priority at any given time? Which platform is your product strongest and weakest on? Be sure to know all the details of your application’s current platforms, and even which ones it can be expanded into.

Take Ownership

Today’s software development process utilizes a plethora of third-party services and tools. Whether you know it or not, your application is no exception.

During the course of development, your previous team may have signed up on your behalf, or even used their own accounts to get access to the services that were needed. Transitioning to a new team means that you must take ownership and be in control of every single one of the services and tools that your application relies on so that you can grant access to your new team without needing to go through a middleman or chase down the original developers.

The following is a list of the various external tools or services that your application might make use of:

• Source Control Management - GitHub, Bitbucket, Gitlab
• Web Hosting - Heroku, EngineYard, Digital Ocean, Bluehost, Amazon Web Services
• File Hosting - Amazon Web Services (S3)
• DNS Provider - GoDaddy, DNSimple, Hover
• Development Services - NewRelic, FileStack, Segment, Bugsnag (and countless others)
• Payment Services - Stripe, Braintree, PayPal
• Blogging Services - WordPress, Tumblr, Ghost
• E-commerce Solutions - Shopify, Squarespace
• Analytics / Tracking - Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics
• Email Marketing: MailChimp, Constant Contact

Ask your outgoing development team which ones are applicable. For any services which are owned by the development team, ask them to transfer ownership to you. If that’s not possible, then ask them to help you create a new account of your own and ensure that the application uses your account instead of theirs. This should not require anything more than changing some configuration settings for your application.

Needless to say, make sure that every development contract protects your interests from day one and assures a smooth transition, no matter what.

Grant Access

With a solid understanding of the ecosystem of your application and ownership over all the various tools and services your application uses, you are now able to provide full access to the incoming team or individual.

Most services will allow you to add a collaborator to your account and grant them a particular level of access.It’s okay to be conservative here. many founders, especially solo entrepreneurs, prefer to give their developers full administrator access to their services and have them handle everything. This has the negative side-effect of keeping you out of the loop, which as we’ve learned, can make it harder to transition in the future.

Should you give your developers full administrator privileges? It’s your call, and most people don’t have a problem with this approach. However, you always need to plan ahead and make sure your decision does not negatively affect a new development team. Failing to do so in the early stages of the project can have annoying consequences in the future.

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Managing The Handoff

Now that you’ve got all your bases covered, you’ll need to manage the handoff from one team to the next. Here are some basic tips for dealing with both the incoming and the outgoing team.

Make sure you properly manage the technical and personal aspects of your project handoff. Make your new team feel at home.

Incoming Team

• Set expectations - The new team should know what your most important goals are so they can focus in the right direction. Managing your own expectations on what the new team can accomplish right away is equally important.
• Check in often - Don’t leave the new team to sink or swim. You want to check in often to make sure that they have everything they need, and don’t feel like they need to fend for themselves. Try to do this without micromanaging. Make sure they know you are there to support and help if they need, but don’t put unnecessary pressure on them.
• Be patient - It takes time for developers to get acclimated to a new codebase. Understand that there will be some learning time before the new team can match the pace of the previous one.

Outgoing Team

• Collect all outstanding code - Make sure all source code is checked into the main repository, and that you know the status of what has or hasn’t been deployed. The new team will need to know exactly where to pick up and start working. I myself have experienced a situation where I took over for a team that had deployed code without putting it in the main repository. This led to bugs, duplicate work, and headaches that could have easily been avoided if the outgoing team left the source code in a consistent state.
• Update their access level - If you parted ways on good terms, you may want to leave them with access to your code and/or deployment. Many teams are happy to help out during the transition phase until the new team can fully take over. If not, consider downgrading or revoking access to prevent any accidental issues or conflicts with the new team.
• Thank them for their work - Transitions can be hectic. While you’re busy dealing with the new team, don’t forget to thank your outgoing team for their contribution to your project.

Conclusion

Any transition in life can be scary, bringing the uncertainty of whether or not it will work out, fear of the unknown, and so on. Transitioning to a new development team is no different, but you can and should take steps to make it easier. In most cases, it just requires a bit of long-term planning.

Having a greater technical and non-technical understanding of your software product, the development process, and all the things that went into the process will help make any transition from one team to the next as seamless and painless as possible.

Best of all, your new team will respect and thank you for being on top of your game! You are likely to save them time and effort, which also means you will save money. In addition, the sooner the new team realizes insist on high professional standards, the better. Chances are they will continue implementing these practices once they take over the project, making the next transition smooth as well.

So let’s review the key points that should precede any transfer of ownership of your software product:

• Collect or create as much documentation as you can about your application, the development environment, and the deployment process.
• Know your product inside and out.
• Maintain control of all of your application’s third-party services and dependencies, and have the usernames and passwords for everything.
• Be ready to give your new team access to everything they need to get up and running.
• Be proactive and don’t leave anything to chance, or to the outgoing development team.

This article was written by Carlos Ramirez III, a Toptal Ruby developer.