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Pre-Vacation Handoff

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This template can be used when handing off your work to another team mate before going on vacation or taking time off.

Create this handoff 3 days prior to your vacation.
Keep your tasks updated until your departure.
Use Loom to elaborate on each section (if needed).
Share with your team and all interested parties and stakeholders.
Feel free to make it your own.

🗣️ Introduction

This section is reserved for giving a brief overview about your time off as well what is contained in your handoff. State the start date and end date of your vacation, share a bit where you are going if you want and give a little bit of context to the sections below.

Example:

Hello all,

I will be going on vacation from November 5th to November 19th. I will be traveling to France and will be visiting Paris and Bandol on the Azure coast.

Before I head out, I would like to share this handoff with you, so you can keep track of the things I am working on.

You will find a brief description on the things I have been working on, as well as the next steps that need to be taken. Also, you can find a list of all of my active tasks in a table. They are fully updated with the current developments and I've tagged the people that need to watch over them during my absence.

🛠️ What I have been working on

This section is reserved to give some overall context of what you have been working on. Don't go deep into details task per task, that will be shared through the task updates.

Example:

I'm currently leading the Project 1, collaborating on Project 2 and acting as a consultant on Projects 3 and 4.

Project 1 is on track and all relevant items have been covered. Could use some help on covering in case something pops up. I've tagged the people below on what tasks should be looked at while I'm off.

Project 2 is on track, however I will not be able to finish off all the tasks I intended by Friday. I've tagged the people who can continue the work in order to keep the project going while I'm off.

Left comments on certain tasks for Projects 3 & 4. They are in the task comment section. Tagged the interested parties in the task list.

⚡ Current Issues and challenges you need to be aware off

If there are any outstanding and overarching issues related to the things you are working on, use this section to communicate it with the rest.

🪜 What are the next steps

Describe the next steps for the overarching strategy on your work. Feel free to write down what you are thinking about, approach to solving things, ideas or more defined actions that can be taken.

🔨Taking care of my tasks

Use the table to link to all your open tasks and tickets, assign the person or multiple persons to keep an eye on them, be informed or do some work on them if it is time-sensitive. Make sure you give overall context to the people you are adding in the comment section and that your tasks/tickets are updated with all the details.

Task/Ticket Link	Person	Comment

💼 Returning to work - my plan

Let everyone know what's your plan once you get back to work. Use this as a checklist as well so you can ease in to your working routine once you are back. Let others add items to your checklist if they deem it important to be checked as soon as you are back.

Here is my checklist of the things I will do first, once I get back to work. Please add an entry if something shows up on the radar that you think I need to check.

Read up on everything I missed (Day 1)

Say hello to my team on Slack (Day 1)

Get back to everyone that wrote to me (Day1)

Make an action plan/schedule based on new information (Day 1)

Talk to Mike as we did not manage to have that meeting before I left for vacation (Day 2)

Outro

Perfect opportunity to say bye to the team and give some appreciations. Put down your closing thoughts as well.