Operational Ownership Checklist Template

The day after launch is part of the architecture. If nobody owns support, deployments, monitoring, vendor escalation, or change approval, the product is not ready no matter how good the prototype looks.

This checklist can be started by product, program, operations, procurement, and vendor stakeholders before engineering validates the delivery path.

Why It Helps

Engineering uses operational ownership context to assess readiness for Prep, the 90-Day Build, delivery, and handoff. It also shows whether a proposed solution creates long-term maintenance risk for MDDS or the agency.

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| Area | Current answer | Named owner | Evidence / link | Risk if unknown | Next step |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Product owner after launch | Program operations will own priorities | Program director | Draft governance notes | Backlog decisions stall | Confirm named product owner |
| Technical owner after launch | Unknown | Agency CIO delegate | - | No one can approve changes or incidents | Identify system owner |
| Hosting owner | Vendor-hosted proposed | Vendor manager | Draft SOW | Security and uptime responsibilities unclear | Review hosting terms |
| Deployment path | Vendor release process | Vendor delivery lead | Vendor release calendar | 90-Day Build may not ship on time | Ask for release process and environments |
| Monitoring and alerts | None today | Unknown | - | Failures discovered by users | Define minimum health checks |
| Support intake | Existing help desk for staff only | Help desk manager | Service catalog entry | Residents may have no support path | Map support channels |
| Incident escalation | Informal email chain | Program lead | - | Slow recovery during outage | Name incident contacts |
| Data backup / recovery | Vendor says backups exist | Vendor manager | Contract appendix needed | Recovery assumptions unverified | Request RPO and RTO details |
| Knowledge transfer | Not planned | Project lead | - | Agency cannot sustain after handoff | Add handoff deliverables |

Readiness Check

If this is true	Engineering should look for
No named technical owner	Ownership or platform decision risk
Vendor owns hosting and releases	Contract, access, observability, and exit risk
No monitoring exists	Reliability and support readiness gap
Help desk does not cover users	Operational model gap
Backups are assumed but undocumented	Recovery and compliance risk

What to notice: operational readiness is not paperwork after delivery. It is evidence that the thing can survive after the deployed team leaves.