What happens when your IT manager leaves?
A departure — resignation, illness, a change of provider — should never put your IT system at risk. Here's how to secure the handover, with or without Alerion.
Signs of IT knowledge that's too concentrated
- Only one person knows why a given configuration exists, or why a given server must not be touched.
- Your external provider holds more information about your IT system than your own team does.
- IT onboarding takes weeks because nothing is written down — everything is passed on verbally.
IT knowledge continuity isn't solved at the moment someone leaves — it's built continuously, by writing down what would otherwise live only in one head.
The five-step handover method
1. Take stock of what actually exists
Before talking about handover, check that the stated inventory matches reality — servers, applications, service accounts, licences. A quick audit almost always reveals gaps.
2. Map the dependencies, not just the list
A list of applications doesn't say what breaks if one of them goes down. Document what each component depends on and what depends on it.
3. Catalogue access and critical accounts
Admin credentials, service accounts, access to provider consoles: without this list, a departure can literally cut off access to part of your IT system.
4. Document decisions, not just the current state
"Why this legacy server is still in production" matters as much as "this server exists". Without the context behind decisions, every successor re-treads the same questions.
5. Name a second point of knowledge before the departure
Even partial, a second person able to answer the essential questions drastically reduces the risk — redundancy of knowledge matters as much as redundancy of servers.
How Alerion supports this handover
Once the method is applied, the result still has to survive the person who produced it.
Where is what we know about our IT system written down?
Alerion's knowledge base centralises the information about every component — not in a personal spreadsheet or one person's inbox.
Who changed what, and why?
Every record keeps a versioned, restorable history — the knowledge doesn't disappear with the person who wrote it.
How do I hand this knowledge over to a newcomer?
The mapping and the records are exportable and browsable without depending on a single, one-off oral handover.
See IT mapping in detail →Other problems this approach covers
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