Plan a vendor exit

---
name: plan-a-vendor-exit
category: start
description: Transition away from a supplier while preserving service, data, knowledge, and control. Use when a contract may end, a vendor is failing, or continuity requires a credible exit option.
---

# plan-a-vendor-exit

## Procedure

1. Confirm authority, notice terms, obligations, dispute boundaries, and decision timeline with qualified owners.
2. Inventory services, data, integrations, credentials, assets, licenses, subcontractors, knowledge, and dependencies.
3. Define the target state: replacement supplier, internal operation, shutdown, or phased combination.
4. Establish export formats, completeness checks, retention, deletion evidence, access removal, and chain of custody.
5. Plan knowledge transfer, staffing, parallel run, user communication, support, billing, and acceptance.
6. Sequence high-risk dependencies and define cutover, pause, abort, and rollback criteria.
7. Rehearse loss of cooperation, failed export, degraded service, and unresolved invoice scenarios.
8. Verify final obligations, access revocation, data disposition, asset return, and service stabilization.

## Guardrails

- Do not signal termination or make binding commitments without authority.
- Never delete the source or revoke critical access before verified transition evidence.
- Preserve legal hold, privacy, security, and records requirements.

## Done

- An exit inventory maps every dependency to disposition, owner, evidence, and date
- A transition plan contains acceptance, continuity, abort, and rollback checks
- Final access, data, assets, payments, and obligations are reconciled