The 4 months was probably cited because the team that develops the IRS homepage has a backlog of work. That work is prioritized by a Product Owner or Project Manager. Requests for changes on a major homepage like irs.gov are likely highly scrutinized through governance processes. NOTHING happens immediately in the software development life cycle (SDLC). Something new coming in goes to the bottom of the backlog by default unless otherwise escalated. This effort may very well have been sitting in the backlog awaiting grooming/refinement and capacity evaluations for the work to begin. This change was escalated to the absolute highest levels and was prioritized at the top of the backlog immediately, probably skipping the governance procedures. Believe there was more than 71 minutes spent from the request to pushing this change to the live servers. That 71 minutes was from when the developer got the direction to do it. This is what we call “swarming” in software development. Everyone involved focused on this one thing to get it live.
I have had more than one “ backlog of work’ in my life-—
BUT NOT everything gets done in CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER of surfacing.
KNOWING where/when to put PRIORITIES is part of doing a good job.