Chef, it depends on the scope of the project as to how long it will take and how much time, money, and resources there are to devote to the project. I work in software development and have seen projects smaller than this take 8 or 9 months to complete so I'm not surprised at the length of time it's taking. When you release a project you want to get it right the first time and not have a lot of blow ups in the functionality. Just throwing in my 2 cents.