Software planning guide ยท English
Software ownership, access, and handover: what to agree
Put ownership, licence rights, hosting access, data export, third-party dependencies, documentation, and support responsibilities in the proposal. Buying a subscription and commissioning custom development can create different rights; confirm the terms for your engagement.
Prepared 2026-10-23. General planning guidance; confirm the exact product, provider, and terms for your requirement.
Separate the application from its operating accounts
A website or app may depend on domain registration, hosting, an app-store account, email, messaging, payments, and analytics. Record who owns each account and who administers it. Give access through appropriate roles rather than sharing a personal password. Confirm how ownership and access are transferred when the project ends or an employee leaves.
Clarify custom work and third-party components
Ask which deliverables are included: source code, configuration, design assets, documentation, deployment instructions, and data exports. Third-party libraries, purchased templates, and hosted services may have their own licences. A supplier should state the applicable arrangement instead of promising that every component becomes exclusively yours. Seek appropriate professional advice when negotiating contractual rights.
Practice a handover task
Ask your team to restore a backup in an agreed test environment, export a sample record, or follow a documented deployment process. Identify who responds to defects, who pays for future changes, and what happens when an external provider changes an API. Handover is more useful when someone can carry out these tasks than when it consists only of a document that nobody has checked.
Questions for your brief
- Who controls hosting and app-store accounts?
- Which source and design deliverables are included?
- What support continues after acceptance?