Ann: Suspension from Official Quotation, page-88

Putting my process thinking hat on, we can deduce the following based on increase in cycle time from 4ish to 10ish days :

• Even for a typical 2 finger typing gorilla the average announcement would take no longer than 2 hours to draft.

Hence :

• Remaining 95%+ of cycle time would predominantly be taken up by internal & external (IMEC/WD) approval/review processes.

Approval process cycle times are highly variable/inconsistent. They are either done :

• in series (ie person A approves then emails to person B). At each step the document enters a queue of tasks waiting to be started. If approver is unavailable or working on something that is a higher priority then the process stops.
• in parallel (ie multiple approvers can access online version of document. Cycle time is determined by the slowest approver. Often these are effectively done in parallel ie Exec wont sign until legal reviewed anyway.
• as a group (ie schedule & hold zoom meeting). Challenge to find space in "busy" peoples schedule to hold meeting.
• Larger the organisation the more likely individual disciplines (legal/risk/tech) & multiple layers of management have to sign off separately.
• Any changes to announcement could require the process to start again - leading to 2X/3X/4X cycle time.

For me the only absolute would be that there must be external approval involved. 4DS is too small to take this long themselves unless there is major internal conflict.

External approval may have been slowed down by an almost infinite possibilities that have nothing to do with 4DS. ie - WD/IMEC employee availability (sickies/holidays) or competing priorities, time zones, legal requiring minor wording changes to justify their existence or just bad internal processes.

It could be possible that WD/IMEC cracked the shits and there needs to be extensive mediation before the announcement can be issued. However the parties know each other well & our board would be aware of what would or wouldn't be acceptable to their partners. aka they are not stupid.

To conclude ... this suspension is most likely a complete nothing burger. Maybe Larry at WD is not feeling well or IMEC Legal is out of office having their annual team building workshop in Paris.

Roll on next Monday...