What are the different strategies for rollout to end users?

Answer

There are four major ways of rolling out any project:

• Pilot: The actual production system is installed at a single or limited number of users. Pilot basically means that the product is actually rolled out to limited users for real work.
• Gradual Implementation: In this implementation we ship the entire product to the limited users or all users at the customer end. Here, the developers get instant feedback from the recipients which allow them to make changes before the product is available. But the downside is that developers and testers maintain more than one version at one time.
• Phased Implementation: In this implementation the product is rolled out to all users in incrementally. That means each successive rollout has some added functionality. So as new functionality comes in, new installations occur and the customer tests them progressively. The benefit of this kind of rollout is that customers can start using the functionality and provide valuable feedback progressively. The only issue here is that with each rollout and added functionality the integration becomes more complicated.
• Parallel Implementation: In these types of rollouts the existing application is run side by side with the new application. If there are any issues with the new application we again move back to the old application. One of the biggest problems with parallel implementation is we need extra hardware, software, and resources.