>>Last time I had a customer like that, it took them 13 months to build the new server. The first 11 were for the approval process, two days to set up the machine, and the rest to get me sufficient permissions to actually be able to install the app and set up SQL properly. Then I did it in two days.
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>It is actually a repetitive story we keep hearing. Administration policy has its usage, but, unfortunately, sometimes, it takes a little bit of time. A lot of the percentage applied to specific tasks like that relates to selling the idea, getting it approved, release and find budget, document, migration plan and deployment. The last part is probably the one that you got involved with, mostly, during that task. People do remember that, actually, and it is good to be able to deliver the technical part within just two days. Over the years, the time I spend is geared towards more administration processes and I actually leverage quality and timeframe of the final result more to it now. I have to agree modern processes are tend to be subject to a lot of policies. When being faced to that, we tend to question why it took so long. When you control everything, however, it is a different ball game. Given that to your hands from the very first day, I am pretty sure you could have delivered all that within in a week.

Exactly. It largely depends on who the customer is. The bigger, the more complicated, the longer internal communications take and there are more steps in the hierarchy. Also, the policies get stricter, so nobody has the authority but the designated person, and if that person is absent (vacation, convention, sick leave) the authority doesn't get delegated, but instead the task of approval is put on hold.

A similar, but much smaller app, basically a listener which checks the audit of db A for certain kind of change and then sends some portion of it to db B, is installed and runs the backlog (usually the changes from last three months) within two hours. I had cases when it took three months. Causes: db B on a different server, nobody knows how to open ports or what is needed to do it; a contractor or a less skilled person installed SQL server; nobody there to supply the pieces of the connectstring; my account doesn't have the permission to run cmd.exe and this runs as a scheduled task; doesn't have permission to create a scheduled task; doesn't have scheduled tasks in the control panel etc etc. Just finding who can remove these limitations sometimes takes days.

Ah and the most ridiculous piece of the permissions game: I created a folder where to put this listener, unzipped it, started editing its ini file and then didn't have the permissions to save it (!). After sending an email to admin, tried to give myself the rights - and I had the right to give myself rights (!). Who'd a thunk...