The shift handover note that stops things being dropped

Where work actually gets lost

Not in the middle of a shift. At the seam between two of them. Someone was halfway through chasing a carrier, the shift ended, and the next person had no idea it was in flight. The customer finds out first.

Verbal handovers fail because the outgoing person is tired and the incoming person is not yet oriented. Written handovers fail when there is no format, because then they are a paragraph and the important line is in the middle of it.

The five lines

Same order, every time. The order matters more than the wording: consistency is what lets someone scan it in twenty seconds.

1. What changed. Anything that is different from the last time this person worked. New promo live, a product pulled, a courier issue.
2. What is outstanding. Things in flight with your name on them. Include the state, not just the topic: “chased DPD about #1042, waiting on a reply, ref 88213”.
3. What to watch. Things that are fine now and might not stay fine. Stock getting thin, a customer who is getting impatient.
4. Who is on next. Names and times, so nobody guesses.
5. What I would do first. The single highest-value opinion in the note. It transfers judgement, not just facts.

Copy this

HANDOVER - [date] [shift]

CHANGED:
OUTSTANDING:
WATCH:
NEXT ON:
DO FIRST:

Empty headings are deliberate. A blank line under OUTSTANDING is information: it says nothing is in flight, which is different from having forgotten to mention it.

Three rules that keep it working

• Post it in the room, not in a DM. The next person might not be who you expect.
• Write it before you are finished, not after. Ten minutes before the end, while you still remember the detail.
• Anything under OUTSTANDING gets an owner. A handover that lists work without assigning it just moves the ambiguity along.

A good handover is not a summary of your shift. It is a briefing for the next one.

If your outstanding items are already tasks with a name and a due time, this note gets much shorter, because the work is tracked rather than described. That is the argument in turning messages into tasks.