Project Handover Template
A ready-to-use project handover document in Word for passing a project, or a phase of it, from the delivery team to the people who will run it day to day. It's included in our PMO Governance Pack.
What's inside: 8 sections
- Version control and distribution
- Handover overview: purpose, type, scope and context
- Project summary: background, delivery and budget
- Outstanding items: open risks, issues, actions, dependencies and agreed exceptions
- Knowledge transfer: key contacts, documentation, systems and access, lessons learned
- Ongoing support and business as usual arrangements
- Handover checklist
- Handover sign-off
How to use it
Use it whenever responsibility moves from the project team to a business as usual owner, at the end of the project or at the end of a phase. Confirm readiness first with the Operational Readiness Checklist, hand over every open risk and issue to a named owner, and get both sides to sign. For keeping risks and issues current up to handover, read our guide: What goes in a RAID log, and who owns it?
FAQs
What format is it?
A Word document (.docx) you can edit and brand as your own.
What's the difference between a handover and a closure report?
The handover passes responsibility for what the project delivered to the people who will run it. The closure report is the formal record that the project itself is complete, signed off by the sponsor.
Is the handover template free?
It's part of the PMO Governance Pack, alongside the other core project documents. Our PMO Health Check is free.
What's in the PMO Governance Pack
Templates
- Project Initiation Document (PID) template
- RAID log
- Terms of Reference
- Statement of Work
- Operational Readiness Checklist
- Handover to business as usual template
- Project Closure Report
Guides
- Read Me First
- Getting Started
- Implementation Guide
- Naming Conventions Guide
Get the handover template and the full governance set
The PMO Governance Pack includes this template and the core documents to run your projects consistently.