These problems tend to be systemic, not just tech problems and usually by the time we reach this stage management is a little more amendable to things like feature freezes than what the regular crew would be dealing with. There is a reason you get to that stage.

So I can see how we have (much) more freedom when it comes to setting the time table and more diplomacy and better salesmanship might be required at an earlier stage. But then you can point to this comment here and suggest that it is probably much cheaper to do this in house than to hire a bunch of consultants to do it by the time the water is sloshing over the dikes.