Post-Handoff Change Procedure

After handoff, engineering work and production operations become coordinated but distinct responsibilities.

Default Model

• The development company continues to design and implement engineering changes.
• Anchor governs production operational execution.
• Production changes follow Anchor release, maintenance, and incident procedures once the system is Anchor-managed.

Standard Change Flow

1. The development company prepares the change.
2. The development company communicates operational impact, rollout needs, and rollback needs.
3. Anchor reviews production readiness, scheduling, and operational risk.
4. The change is executed through the agreed production procedure.
5. Anchor confirms production health, alerts, logs, and recovery posture after execution.

Required Inputs for Production Changes

Every post-handoff production change should include:

• change summary
• affected environments
• expected user impact
• required maintenance window if any
• rollback plan
• new runbook notes or operational changes
• new monitors, alerts, backups, or secrets requirements if introduced

Incident-Time Restrictions

During active incidents:

• Anchor may restrict non-essential production changes.
• Emergency fixes still originate from the development company unless separately staffed.
• Anchor governs incident communication, production controls, and operational rollback decisions.

Changes That Require Additional Coordination

Additional coordination is required when a change affects:

• production secrets or access boundaries
• DNS or Cloudflare administration
• logging or metrics shape
• backup scope or restore behavior
• security controls or exposure surface
• alert routing or escalation behavior