"Surprise" is a word and concept seldom associated with higher education policy or with one of its most demanding projects, the development of a statewide articulation and transfer program. Legislators who mandate articulation enterprises and officials who care for these behemoths present themselves as thoughtful managers who cherish meticulous research and careful planning. Whether thoughtfully or not, states usually take years or even decades to develop channels through which students may efficiently flow from high school through community colleges and on to four-year universities. As enthusiasm for statewide articulation plans percolates out from large, prosperous, inventive states to smaller, lower-scoring, and less densely populated regions of the country, the pace at which transfer degree initiatives germinate, grow, bear fruit, and occasionally wilt increases. This chapter analyzes the complex and often surprising process by which Louisiana, a small state with four higher education systems, deployed a transfer degree program in a scant two years. The author reviews the full range of challenges, from social to curricular to promotional, that were overcome and makes recommendations concerning the development of transfer degree programs under both normal and extreme or unusual circumstances.