project development and life

Sometimes your personal life provides insight into your professional life. Here's the inspiration for my post today.
"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward."
I'm working on a web program that has been plagued with issues from the very beginning. It begin with heated discussions in the narrowing of the scope and evolved into securing an SME and then investigation into format delivery type. Recordings went badly as there were ground issues in the electrical plug in the room and video clips were never secured. After solving many many many issues and many many many months later and we are on the verge of completion. At this point I'm already looking back at the project for lessons learned. And I thought wow that quote really applies to this project.
It took so long to complete because life had to continue forward-- by this I mean that projects on the current project plan had to be completed and this one had to fit in whenever there was down time (which where I work doesn't happen often). And this project couldn't be understood without looking back at it. It's easy to see the pitfalls in reverse.
Just a thought.