It is not the AI. Across six rollouts this year, the schedule risk lived in identity, connector allowlisting and naming confusion.
A Gemini Enterprise rollout looks like a product install and behaves like an integration project. Here is where the weeks go.
Okta, Entra, or Google as the IdP. SCIM claim mappings are small and unforgiving. The workforce identity pool cannot be swapped after data stores exist, so the identity decision is effectively permanent. Make it in week one with the person who owns the IdP in the room, not in week four with a screenshot.
Four kinds, each with a different permission story:
There is a Workspace add-on and a connector platform, and the names overlap. We have watched a client's admin buy one while the project needed the other. A one-page "which Gemini is this" diagram at kickoff prevents a week of confusion at procurement.
The rollout is done when people use it, not when it is deployed. Waves of 100 to 500 users, a short curriculum per role, and a feedback sheet with real prompts. Prompts that fail once and succeed when rephrased are the ones to log — they point at a connector or data-store problem, not a user problem.
Five weeks for a pilot of up to fifty users with three to five connectors. Sixteen weeks for a full-organisation rollout of 500 to 1,500 users in three waves. The AI part of either is a few days.
Tell us what system the answer lives in and who needs it. We'll reply with a view on whether it's a two-week assessment, a five-week pilot, or something else.