In traditional, larger systems development where an entire system is rolled out in one chunk, the focus is on the rollout of software and the expectation during the rollout phase is that there will be little or no change to the product being rolled out.  It is generally speaking a "take it as is for now" proposition.

When rolling out a SharePoint solution for work and project management using the WAG process, there are a few differences from a traditional software development rollout scenario:

·         SharePoint solutions are not just software deliverables – your development team is delivering process improvements, not just software products. Because processes are always changing, you should be prepared and budget to make changes during and even after rollout.

·         SharePoint allows you to easily make changes to software. Therefore, unlike traditional systems development where making changes can be difficult and expensive, SharePoint facilitates making changes during the rollout phase.

·         Every iteration of the rollout phase delivers a part of the overall solution - that part agreed between you and the customer as the deliverable for a specific iteration. The deliverable is clearly defined in Phase 2 of this WAG and should be a usable entity, which delivers some measurable, incremental value to your customer’s organization.

Therefore, it is essential that an architecture and development team is receptive to the idea of making changes to the entity being delivered during the rollout phase – it is psychologically important that the customer perceives that the development team is willing and capable of making changes. Obviously, the more the customer has been an active and educated participant in the design review process, the less the need for major changes during the rollout phase.

It is likely that there will be a lot of feedback/change requests on the earlier iterations of a solution and less change requests on subsequent iterations. It is recommended that you assess all feedback on a given iteration, decide to act on some as part of the current iteration and to address others as part of subsequent iterations.

It is important to note that you are first and foremost deploying a business process (e.g. Manage Project), which happens to be supported by SharePoint. It is therefore likely that the end user training at rollout will start with a process overview at a minimum.

Table 5: Phase 5 Rollout Summary