Smoothly transfer new product responsibilities with a support transition plan

When you create a new product, you hope that it will be successful. If it does become successful, however, you’ll find that more work needs to be done in making long-term plans for your product’s support. In short, you’ll need to move the product from the jurisdiction of the product development team to a more permanent team.

To ensure that this transition goes smoothly, you can use a support transition plan. As part of the innovation framework, a support transition plan helps new innovations continue to thrive once they are out of the initial development stage.

With this Lucidchart support transition plan template as a resource for your team, you can make sure that nothing gets dropped during the handover. The template can be regularly updated and accessed from anywhere. As you move ahead with your product transition, use this template as a valuable tool to guide the process.

How to use the support transition plan template in Lucidchart

After you have opened the support transition plan template in Lucidchart, fill out each section of the template in whatever order works best, using sticky notes to answer the questions in each of the following sections:

• Skills: What skills are needed in the new team? Would this team become the new support team or is there an existing team to take over responsibilities?
• Support: What should support look like? What support were we previously providing? What should the future hold?
• Funding: Where will funding come from for this team? Head count or other resources? Is it within budget?
• Materials: What equipment, materials, or physical spaces need to be transferred to the new team?
• Communication: What needs to be communicated to whom as part of transferring support? (Think about change management.)

You can discuss the questions with your team as you go, or leave comments for others you’re collaborating with. At the end of the exercise, you’ll have a valuable resource that will help you keep track of important elements of your product transition. You can also share it with relevant stakeholders to get feedback on your plans.