An Alternate Strategy?

[6S.Tamat]

Strike i'm with you in your general assumption, but extending in my point of view your metaphore:
- the road is in a private neighborood paid by the local community
- after some months of work (insthead of some weeks said by the construction company) the community is irritated and is yelling the boss of the company
-the boss of the company needs to fix it, but explains precisely the problem to clarify more the situation.

The fact that they say: "there is nothing to tell because we are working on" is like to not say that an old pipe exploded and to say nothing to the community more than "we are working on some new problems".
If someone thinks that there is no way to talk about technical problems i would simply remember that the world is not full only of children not able to understand the language of the programmer gods. It is like to say to the community "We are sorry for the late but there are problems- What kind of? - I'm sorry you would not understand."
If someone is interested in seeing how a complex developement can be described he could go to read the Xplane 10 developer blog.
Explain the problems require time for sure, but the trust is not for free and the situation is not so calm and positive now, after an year.