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When a System Becomes Anchor-Managed

Anchor responsibility starts only after explicit production acceptance.

Acceptance Trigger​

A system becomes Anchor-managed when all of the following are true:

  • The system is intended for ongoing managed production operations.
  • The pre-handoff checklist is complete.
  • The handoff package has been delivered and reviewed.
  • A production runbook exists and is accessible to Anchor.
  • Ownership, escalation, and admin placement are documented.
  • Anchor has accepted the system into managed production operations.

Launching a system to production is not, by itself, sufficient. Handoff requires a clear acceptance event.

Before Acceptance​

Before acceptance:

  • The development company owns the system end to end.
  • The development company controls development pace and release timing.
  • The development company may continue to own dev and staging environments.
  • The development company may retain dev and staging Cloudflare, analytics, and related tooling.
  • Production may exist, but production operations are not yet Anchor-owned until acceptance is complete.

After Acceptance​

After acceptance:

  • Anchor owns production operational governance.
  • Anchor owns production monitoring, logging, alerting, backups, secrets operations, security visibility, and incident response.
  • Anchor owns production runbook stewardship and operational readiness expectations.
  • The development company still owns code changes, feature work, and engineering fixes unless a separate agreement states otherwise.

Environment Boundary​

Unless separately documented:

  • Development remains with the development company.
  • Staging remains with the development company.
  • Production moves to Anchor operational ownership after acceptance.

If Anchor operates non-production environments for a specific system, that exception must be documented in the handoff package.

No Implied Transfer​

Handoff does not automatically transfer:

  • source code ownership
  • application roadmap ownership
  • CI pipeline ownership
  • architecture decision authority
  • non-production environment ownership

Those responsibilities remain with the development company unless a separate agreement changes them.