Services / Onboarding & training
The goal of the handover is that you never need to call us again.
Most agencies benefit from a client who cannot operate their own store. We think that is a bad business to be in and a worse thing to sell. Training is priced into the work, and it is designed to end the dependency rather than to soften it.
The canon
The principles this rests on, named.
Each with who established it, so the claim can be checked rather than taken on our word.
Cognitive load is finite: intrinsic, extraneous and germane load compete for the same working memory.
John Sweller, Cognitive Load Theory (1988)
It is why a four-hour training session teaches almost nothing. Extraneous load has to be cut before anything can be learned.
Retrieval practice beats rereading, by a wide and repeatedly replicated margin.
Roediger and Karpicke (2006); the testing effect
So the session ends with the client doing the task unaided, not with us demonstrating it while they watch and nod.
Spacing: the same total time, distributed, produces far more retention.
Ebbinghaus (1885), replicated continuously since
Three sessions across three weeks beat one long day, which is why we structure the handover that way even though one day is easier to schedule.
Minimalist instruction: task-centred, error-tolerant, short.
John Carroll, The Nurnberg Funnel (1990)
Adults skip documentation and start doing. Documentation should therefore be organised by task and designed to be entered at any point, not read front to back.
Write for the person on the worst day, not the best.
Technical writing practice
Documentation is opened when something is broken and someone is stressed. Findability beats completeness.
The bus factor is a design requirement.
Software engineering; applies identically to operations
If one person holds the knowledge, the handover failed. Every process is taught to at least two people.
Method
What actually happens, in order.
Not the owner. The person who will add a product on a Tuesday afternoon. Training is designed for them.
'Add a new product', 'Issue a refund', 'Change the homepage banner'. Organised by what someone wants to do, findable in seconds.
Two to four minutes each, one task each. Nobody watches a forty-minute recording, and nobody can find anything inside one.
Across three weeks. Each ends with the client performing the task while we say nothing.
Explicitly, and named in the handover document. One trained person is a single point of failure with a certificate.
Payment gateway down, site down, a wrong price live, an order that will not fulfil. What to check, in order, and who to call.
What goes wrong
The failure modes nobody advertises.
Everything covered, nothing retained. It exists because it is convenient to schedule, not because it works.
Chapters named after the software's menu structure rather than the tasks a person performs. Unfindable exactly when it is needed.
The owner will not be the one adding products in six months, and the person who is was never taught.
Demonstration without practice. It produces confident recognition and zero ability, which is worse than an honest blank.
Written once, never dated, describing an interface that changed. A wrong instruction is worse than none.
What we refuse
A studio is defined as much by this list.
- We do not withhold access or credentials to keep a client dependent.
- We do not deliver a single marathon session in place of spaced practice.
- We do not hand over documentation without a date and a named owner.
- We do not train one person and call the handover done.
Measured, not felt
How anyone can tell whether it worked.
The client completes each core task unaided, observed, at the final session.
At least two trained people per process, named.
Support requests in the first ninety days, which should fall rather than plateau.
Documentation dated and assigned, with a review date set.