> It was a philosophy the whole team had bought into - I spoke about it to another team member and he said 

>

> "It's the 80/20" rule. We can get 80% of the transformations we need this way" 

>

> I asked him how they were going to finish 100% of the project and he started looking intently at the screen.

This struck a real chord with me. This attitude is not uncommon, and is usually accompanied by an impression that you can just "hand wave" the 20% away. Sadly, for fully automated systems, the 20% is often the bit you should be worried about and you should start by addressing that first. Perhaps that is the sort of knowledge that only experience can bring.