# 5. What would you need to know before giving us an implementation timeline or a fixed price?

**A good answer should expose assumptions before giving a duration or fee.** Ask for a dependency-based plan rather than a generic enterprise GRC implementation benchmark.

**Why it matters to buyers.** IBM’s migration documentation explicitly distinguishes development, user-acceptance and production environments and requires matching versions and patch levels for the described environment migration. That is one concrete example of a technical prerequisite a delivery estimate must accommodate. ([ibm.com](https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/openpages/9.1.x?topic=guide-migrating-openpages-environments&utm_source=openai))

**Put it to:** Michael Rasmussen, the proposed delivery lead and an independent programme owner.

**A strong answer should cover:**
- The first accepted workflow, distinguished from technical installation and full programme completion.
- Source-data condition, historical scope, integrations and permission design.
- Buyer decision-making time, subject-matter expertise and control-owner availability.
- Configuration versus custom development, including upgrade and support responsibilities.
- Trial loads, business testing, cutover, rollback and post-launch support.
- Assumptions that trigger a scope change, the decision owner and the pricing mechanism.

**Ask for proof:** a work breakdown with buyer and partner responsibilities, named dependencies and an acceptance deliverable for each milestone.

Have the expert distinguish **elapsed time**, **partner effort** and **internal effort**. Require the estimate to state which activities can overlap and which must finish first.

**Follow-up:** “What is excluded from this fixed fee, and which excluded activity could prevent the first workflow from going live?”

> **Expert quote — pending interview:** [Insert approved quotation and attribution.]