precisely correct. if consultants were asked to do this, the solution might have looked something like "there are nine months worth of opportunities to optimal

precisely correct. if consultants were asked to do this, the solution might have looked something like "there are nine months worth of opportunities to optimally architect the project; these are the top ten problems we identified and the top three preventing us from shipping; here are the tradeoffs; which would you like us to work on?" this could've been a resume generating event for a lot of people that said, burn out and feeling unheard definitely sucks. that probably played a part in how the OP landed here