Handover: how to pass work across shifts and time zones

What is a handover?

A handover is the structured transfer of work and context from one person or shift to the next, so the work carries on without the next person having to rediscover what was already known.

Done badly, it is the biggest source of lost time in a team that works across time zones.

Handover across time zones

In a follow-the-sun team, one region passes open work to the next at the end of its day, and a shift handover in a support team works the same way. The person receiving the work cannot ask a quick question, because the sender is offline, so the note has to stand on its own.

A handover checklist

  • What changed today, in one or two lines.
  • What is in progress, with links to the task or ticket.
  • What is blocked, and who can unblock it.
  • Decisions that were made, and anything still waiting for one.
  • Anything urgent the next person must do first.

Handover best practices

  • Write the handover before the end of the day, not on the way out.
  • Link to the work rather than describing it from memory.
  • Mark what is urgent so it does not wait behind routine items.
  • Save the checklist above as a handover template in the team channel, so every note has the same shape.

Why handovers fail

Most failures are omissions: the context that felt too obvious to write down. A good test is whether someone who missed the whole day could act on the note without asking a single question.

Last reviewed 2026-11-01.

Related terms

  • Follow-the-sun model — The follow-the-sun model passes work from one team to the next as the working day ends in each region, so something is always moving and customers get 24-hour coverage across time zones without anyone working nights.
  • Asynchronous communication — Asynchronous communication is any way of working together that does not need everyone present at the same moment: people write, record or post, and others respond when they can.
  • Blocker — A blocker is anything that stops a piece of work from moving forward that the person doing it cannot resolve alone, such as a missing decision, an access request or a dependency on another team.

All glossary terms →