8 weeks? No way...... We just upgraded yesterday, and here's how it went for us:
Tuesday morning: Create the deployment images from the installation discs. Architecture, Structure & MEP. All 3 Revit flavors well before lunchtime.
Wednesday morning: IT guy set up GPO policy for the packages for deployment to the different disciplines. He tested the deployment on his computer to verify it went fine.
Wednesday Evening: Remote into user's computers to uninstall 2008 version, reboot, allow the server to take over to install the appropriate version of 2009. This step was only necessary because we had a bunch of manual installs for our pilot projects. In the future, all upgrades will be automatic from the server via group policy.
Thursday morning: Now that everyone has been upgraded, I moved all NEW content to the server. Our custom content was easily upgraded to the 2009 format via the batch utility that came with the installation disc.
So, overall it was something like 48 hours. If that was the only thing the 2 of us had to deal with, it could have easily been done all in a single day.
On the other hand, if this was Architectural Desktop and/or Building Systems, then the 8 weeks would sound about right.
Michael