When the doomed project started about 11 months ago, we had a very tight, very optimistic schedule that had us publishing an interim rule some time this past summer and the final rule on the deadline of January 1, 2012. After a couple months, we had missed a major deadline and it was clear that we were still nowhere near meeting its goal, so we got a revised schedule that had us publishing the interim rule by January 1, 2012 - not the original intent, but still within the letter of the Congressional mandate. Based on what we had done at that point, the revised schedule was still very tight and very optimistic. As the project went on we missed deadlines by a few days here and there and had new bits added in, so multiple slips in the schedule led to us hoping to have the interim rule out of our building by January 1, at which point it would start review by other departments of government - not meeting the Congressional mandate, but at least we would be able to prove that there was a tangible product and say that it was out of our hands. The ball would be in someone else's court.
That was the case as of two weeks ago or so. After enough such delays, H. is now working on a new schedule. And of course, now the holidays are coming up and people will be out of the office for vacations and stuff. By now I will be surprised if we even get it out of the building in time.
This was mostly inevitable. As I said, everyone knew from the start that a one-year deadline was much shorter than usual.
However, every time we go over a deadline by too much, the team has to explain why and have a meeting and H. has to send several e-mails and put together a new schedule. So I have to assume we would be a little bit closer to done if the schedule had been more realistic to begin with.
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