How fast could we develop? In addition to the requirements, we were also handed a schedule (a PERT chart, if anyone still knows what that is). It was laughably padded. Padded so much that it would have been impossible to fall behind schedule. I almost always finished my work for the day before lunch. Sometimes I would then go for a three martini lunch with the sales guys, or spend the afternoon in the library or flying the F-14 simulator. Sometimes I would spend the afternoon working on tools to make debugging easier. It was a fun job, but ultimately unsatisfying and I left after two years.
Fucking bad from what I've read. It's a really bad problem still and the USN needs to correct it by having a tighter integration with the HW/SW people and the actual soldiers/sailors.