HOTO

"Khali haath aaye the hum, 
Khali haath jaayenge

Saare applications ka HOTO deke jaayenge

Ae naye programmer tu aa re aa, 
HOTO k saath free bugs leke jaa re jaa"

HOTO is Hand Over Take Over; transferring on the ownership of applications to some other person. The sessions ideally should have complete walk through of the development and also documentation soft-copy. Some HOTO Givers are so particular in their work that every aspect of the code is documented with commented reasons. The structure of their work is so classified properly into sections mentioning the clear purpose. The documentations with screenshots and logic are more than enough to understand the application. Some HOTO Givers will just provide an overview of the project and this is this and that is that and they are done. Some HOTO Givers have actually left the organization and the applications are orphan for a while and then the HOTO sessions are done with brief understanding why the application was made and a user manual is handed over. So far it was the HOTO Givers tale, tragedy is at the HOTO Takers end. If the taker is new to the technology then its cherry on the trouble cake. Firstly the time would go into finding how things work. And if luck doesn't smile then there is an urgent requirement from Business end, to be done on priority otherwise the customer centricity pillar will shake. If the latest code base is available then at least the time of downloading the same from Production servers and creating exactly same project is saved. Backups are helpful; for if we try out some code changes and they break after production deployment. The enhancements and bug-fixes are such that the doer many a times gets questions that why was this all not thought of and handled before. Bug fixes require the doer to dig deep into the code, check logs and finally find out the root cause and fix it. Sometimes fixing a leaking tap is much easier. If the integrated systems happen to upgrade then do all the changes for somehow making the integration work as before. Otherwise there is users shout on, "System is down". There are many hidden surprises while working on the project. Things were supposed to happen this way and when its investigated, actually things never happened the said way. No use arguing over spilled milk. Do whatever possible to make things happen. And when the Taker has actually Taken Over the whole application, there is an HOTO planned for either the Taker is moved to new role or leaving the organization. And the cycle goes on till the application is live....