No, it is my contention that they did not spend years planning something that is too full of unknowns to accurately plan for in detail. I think I made clear in my post that that was my specific point.
People tend to procrastinate or simply prioritize things by what is most important, critical, or time-sensitive. So they wait until something needs to be done before doing it, especially if they are underfunded or low on resources. You don't want the product to fail because you spent all of your time planning out how to tell everyone it succeeded instead of making it succeed.
In the 70s my father was working as a systems manager at a Fortune 5 company with a 1-digit Class-A IP address. Every year in December they would plot out their computer storage requirements for the following year. Every year they ran out of storage by February. This was not some under-funded Biotech firm, this was a massive corporation with unlimited resources. People invariably underestimate how long things are going to take and how much they need in terms of resources. They make assumptions about other people's timelines that are wildly inaccurate. If you don't believe me, get your kitchen remodeled and tell me how long that takes.
Personally, I would far prefer that the company simply tell us where they are in the process than how long they believe the next step will take but I seem very much in the minority on that. People here are constantly clamoring for dates as to when things will be done and deride the company for not providing timing they claim the company should know. But given their predictions in the past, it seems pretty clear to me that the company has no real idea when things will happen.
