Projects that disappoint rarely fail in the build. They fail at the seam between the people who sold the work and the people who do it. The deal was won on a series of conversations, a demonstration, and a set of impressions the client formed about what they were buying. What crosses to delivery is a signed scope document, which contains a fraction of that and none of the impressions.
The cheapest fix is that whoever will run the project attends the last two client conversations before signature. Not to sell, but to hear what was promised, what the client is worried about, and what they will be judged on internally. That knowledge cannot be transferred in a document because the person writing the document does not know which parts matter. Firms that do this consistently report fewer early-project surprises than firms with elaborate handover templates.
Where a live handover is not possible, insist on a written record of three specific things beyond the scope: what the client said they were unhappy about with their previous supplier, what they asked for that we said no to, and what we said yes to that is not written in the contract. Each of those is an expectation that will surface in week three, and each is invisible in a statement of work.
Name the client's own constraints explicitly, because they determine the plan more than the requirements do. Who can make a decision and how quickly. Who must be consulted. What internal deadline is driving this. What data exists and what condition it is in. Who on their side is actually available and for how much of their time. Sales knows most of this and is rarely asked for it, because it is not part of the contract.
Then hold a kickoff that is a working session rather than an introduction. Walk through the plan, the first slice, the decisions needed and by when, the communication cadence, and the definition of done — with both sides present and both sides correcting it. Anything the client hears in that meeting that surprises them is a gap between what was sold and what was scoped, and finding it on day one costs an awkward hour rather than a month.
Structurally, the incentive is worth examining if this keeps happening. Where sales is compensated on signature and carries no consequence for delivery, the pressure is toward optimistic commitments, and no amount of process fixes an incentive. Firms that tie some part of the sales outcome to the project's health — delivered on plan, renewed, referenceable — find that the handover problem largely solves itself, because the person selling starts caring about what they promised.
