From: "Marnix Schrooyen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > I have been going through the CMS message board and read a lot of > interesting stuff on CMS systems. I'm quite new to this industry and I > wondered how long it would take to execute an implementation of a > medium-sized CMS system (I know this is vague).
In your subject you include sales in the cycle, and my experience is the following: Sales phase (from the first contact with the customer until they sign the contract): 1-4 months. Slack phase (from the signing of the contract until the customer actually lets you start): 0-4 months. Implementation phase: Small system (no system modifications, only templates): 2-8 weeks Medium system (minor modifications, no application development): 1-2 months Large system (major modifications to the system and or customized application development): 2-4 months. Sink in phase (time after delivery, until the customer actually starts using the system): Systems without customized application development: 0-1 months. Systems with customized application development: 0-9 months. So, for a medium system you are looking for everything from one to ten months from you first start talking to the customer until you can send the final invoice. Mind you, this is not consulting hours I'm talking about, but actual time passed. The reason for this is that the time passed is mostly dependant on not how many hours of development/consulting that is needed, but how fast communication is going between you and your customer. The amount of development hours is dependant on what system you use, and should be negligable in any small or medium projects. If it isn't, you aren't *using* a CMS, but *building* one. > consulting phase, development phase, implementation phase, testing phase I think it's a mistake to split the implementation into these phases. They should all be done continuously and simoultaneously on any project longer than two weeks. On projects shorter than two weeks, it's not useful to split them for management purposes. Best Regards Lennart Regebro Torped Strategi och Kommunikation AB -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
