Ask Six Questions About One Handoff
Seam Audit Worksheet
Companion to The Child Should Never Experience the Organizational Chart · Updated 2026-09-30
Use this when a handoff or collaboration between two roles keeps failing, or before you design one. Worked as Tool 2 in “Seven Prototype Tools Put the Ideas to Work in Real Meetings”, in “Make the Seams Disappear for the Child”, with the six questions explained in “Design the Seams.”
Name the seam being audited and what triggers the handoff or collaboration it covers. Record the sending role and the receiving role by name, not by department.
| Field | Record here |
|---|---|
| Seam (for example, classroom to intervention) | |
| Sending role, by name | |
| Receiving role, by name | |
| Trigger: what causes the handoff or collaboration to occur? |
The Six Questions
| Question | Answer for this seam |
|---|---|
| Information: What knowledge must move? | |
| Interpretation: What must the receiving person understand, not merely receive? | |
| Ownership: Who remains responsible before, during, and after the handoff? | |
| Confirmation: How do we know the handoff was understood and acted upon? | |
| Feedback: How does new evidence return to the people who needed it? |
What Goes Wrong and What It Costs
| Field | Record here |
|---|---|
| Known failure modes of this seam | |
| What the student actually pays when the seam fails |
One Change to Test
Close the worksheet with one specific change to test, not a general intention to communicate better.
- The change:
- Who will try it, and starting when:
- What we will look at to see whether it worked:
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