Migrate the solution into the production environment.
The intent of a pilot is to identify defects or problems with the migration plan, schedule, operations and support plans, training plan, and the operation of the system. The primary benefit of conducting the pilot is to identify any defects in the plans or in the solution before the costly full-scale deployment. Another advantage of doing a pilot is to obtain a realistic set of materials needed for all remaining site deployments.
During the full-scale deployment, the project follows the same activities as in the pilot, but now the IT solution is rolled out to the remainder of the sites. Each of the sites in the full-scale deployment leverages the materials created during the pilots to minimize redundancy in effort and documentation.
The final phase is the Deploy phase, which is divided into the Pilot and Full Scale Deployment sub-phases. Deployment involves the migration of the solution into the production environment(s). The pilot is conducted to identify any defects in the plans or in the solution before a costly full-scale deployment. The key here is that the materials prepared and used for the pilot are leveraged in each subsequent site deployment to minimize redundancy in effort and documentation. Full Scale Deployment includes all the activities necessary to migrate the new solution into production following the same activities as in the pilot, as well as the necessary activities for training and business change management.