I'm not trying to troll you, it is just my opinion that Star Citizen is the poster child for how to not do project management.
Add to that the fact that they've monetized the development process and therefor have no real incentive to finish the development process.
With that said, graphically, the game is still very impressive.
Star Citizen will hopefully end up getting a really impressive documentary one day.
[Edit : Right, this reply got away from me. Sorry about that, and I hope it isn't too belligerent. The thing that really pains me is that a lot of the criticism I have seen along the years seems unfair and baseless, and after 8 years, it does wear down on you. Hence the wall of text below.]
Alright, but based on what data, what reliable sources?
So far what we've seen of it points to them building that game the right way, without taking shortcuts, with as little superfluous work as they possibly can while also keeping the crowd happy for it to be funded at all. I have followed the game since 2012, I have a critical eye and at the same time know first-hand how building these things happen. I don't mean to make an argument from authority here, which would be fallacious given my anonymity, but I want to point out that I can point to a dozen examples of them project managing right - which is not to say they haven't made mistake. But I do not see this systemic project management failure you speak of.
The biggest example that everyone takes from granted of just how the game has been managed right and built the right way by paying upfront in years-long technology endeavors has been the years-long porting of CryEngine to support 64-bit positioning. I believe it took them two years, and without that, the game simply could not handle both space and a 1st-person perspective in the same continuous positioning system. You can now EVA anywhere in space, with millimeter precision while traveling at .2c in a map that is AU-scaled in size.
They have a huge incentive to finish, which is selling the game without the insecurity that such a continuous pre-alpha induces, not to mention S42's profits. You may have the opinion they have no incentive to finish but there is just as strong a point to be made for them to want to get it done, at least a 1.0 version.
Also, it is not just graphically impressive. It features the best and most impressive FM a space sim every had, bar KSP. It features physics at that scale with fully realized ships interiors as well as a growing, functional system of components and damage system. It has hierarchical physics grid working in multiplayer, it has a unified 1st/3rd person system that Frontier Development is probably painfully learning the value of right now. There's so much more to that game than graphics, honestly.
As for the documentary, following the development right now is enough, unless we are talking dirty laundry and assuming that something terribly nefarious and incompetent is happening behind the scenes for which, to this day, I don't see the supporting data for.
