1. Checklist: Operational Handover¶

Use this checklist for the formal handover of the AI system from the project team to the operations organisation (Gate 4 — Go-live). All items must be ticked and documented before the handover is officially complete.

1. Technical Readiness¶

• Model documentation complete: Technical Model Card is completed and approved by the Guardian.
• Code repository delivered: All source code, configurations and model definitions are in a repository accessible to the operations organisation (version control).
• Environment documentation in place: Infrastructure requirements (compute, storage, network, access rights) are documented.
• Runbook available: Step-by-step guide for daily operation, restart procedures and scaling has been written and tested by the operations organisation.
• Monitoring active: Dashboards, alerts and thresholds are set up and visible to the operations team.
• Logging configured: Input/output logging is active in line with the requirements of the risk level (minimum 30 days retention for Limited Risk, 12 months for High Risk).

2. Operational Readiness¶

• Operations team assigned: There is a designated owner (Accountable) for the system in the operations organisation.
• Escalation path defined: Incident procedures are documented: who to contact, when, how? → Incident Response
• SLOs established: Service norms (latency, availability, accuracy threshold) have been agreed in writing between the project team and the operations organisation.
• Retraining protocol documented: When and how is the model retrained? Who may initiate this?
• Baseline recorded: Baseline performance (accuracy, latency, usage costs) has been measured and documented as a reference for future performance degradation monitoring.

3. Governance & Compliance¶

• Guardian transferred: The Guardian role has been formally transferred to a person within the operations organisation or an independent party.
• Hard Boundaries communicated: The operations organisation knows and understands the system's Hard Boundaries. Written confirmation in place.
• EU AI Act dossier complete: For High Risk systems, the Technical Dossier is complete and approved by the Guardian. → EU AI Act
• Privacy & Data compliant: Data & Privacy Sheet (GDPR/DPIA) is approved and included in the dossier.
• Licences and contracts arranged: All external API contracts, data licences and vendor agreements have been transferred to the operations organisation.

4. Knowledge Transfer¶

• User training completed: End users are trained. Training materials are available and up to date.
• Administrator training completed: Technical operations team has had a hands-on session with the MLOps engineer from the project team.
• Lessons Learned transferred: Insights from the project are documented and available for future projects. → Lessons Learned
• Contact list delivered: Names and contact details of data providers, model vendors and technical contacts have been transferred.

5. Formal Closure¶

• Handover acceptance signed: Project team and operations organisation have signed the handover form.
• Gate 4 (Go-live) approved: All Gate Review criteria are ticked and documented. → Gate Reviews
• Benefit realisation plan activated: The plan for measuring realised benefits has been transferred to the owner in the operations organisation. → Benefit Realisation
• Project archive closed: All project documents are archived at the agreed location.

Signatures¶

Related modules:

• Phase 4: Delivery — Overview
• Gate Reviews Checklist
• Lessons Learned
• Incident Response

Next step: Complete this checklist together with the operations team before the formal handover → See also: Gate 4 | Phase 5 Monitoring