A deployment is incomplete until another person can recover it without the builder. Use the following proposed operating routine.
What should happen daily, weekly and monthly?
- Daily during the pilot: reconcile source enquiries with tasks and outcomes; resolve exceptions; inspect unsupported commitments and complaints.
- Weekly: review contribution, staff effort, failed actions, usage charges and a sample of ordinary successful interactions.
- Monthly: check access permissions, content ownership, retention execution, vendor changes and the fallback procedure.
- After every meaningful change: version the configuration and rerun the affected acceptance tests.
What should the shutdown runbook contain?
- Who is authorised to stop the system.
- How to disable new AI actions and outbound sequences.
- How to restore the previous phone or enquiry route.
- How to identify work already in progress.
- How to prevent unsafe bulk replay when service returns.
- Who checks for missed enquiries, duplicates and false confirmations.
- How customers affected by an error will be contacted.
- What evidence is retained for investigation under the agreed retention policy.
For telephone workflows, test a fallback that does not rely on the same failed automation path. Ask the telecoms provider to demonstrate it; do not rely on a diagram alone.
Which documents should be in the handover folder?
- Pilot charter and decision record.
- Workflow diagram and data dictionary.
- Approved content and emergency procedures.
- Account ownership and access register.
- Vendor approvals and pricing schedules.
- Privacy review, data-flow map and DPIA decision.
- Configuration export or reproducible setup instructions.
- Test pack and outstanding defects.
- Cost and outcome workbook.
- Exception, incident and shutdown runbooks.
- Support contacts and responsibilities.
- Exit procedure, including data export, deletion and credential revocation.
Acceptance test for handover: ask the deputy to disable the workflow, process a test enquiry manually and restore the approved configuration without the original builder directing every step.
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