The question is interesting but the scenario doesn't sound like that much of a disaster to me. Maybe I'm the only one here who's worked in the insurance business though...?!
A 5-person project with 2 months of work plus another 1.5 months to go is not really that big. Maybe at a startup that's betting the whole company. At a large corp that can just be written off. If the deadline is missed, it just gets re-scheduled. This is not a freak-out scenario. The only concern I'd have is letting people know ASAP if you think the deadline is slipping.
The other stuff about 100's of tables, no unit tests, other system integrations, etc. that sounds like every project in an old school large corp.
In a large corp, as crappy as these apps are, they can go into use internally and process billions of dollars even though they're crappy to use. You then spend the next 10 years improving it.
A 5-person project with 2 months of work plus another 1.5 months to go is not really that big. Maybe at a startup that's betting the whole company. At a large corp that can just be written off. If the deadline is missed, it just gets re-scheduled. This is not a freak-out scenario. The only concern I'd have is letting people know ASAP if you think the deadline is slipping.
The other stuff about 100's of tables, no unit tests, other system integrations, etc. that sounds like every project in an old school large corp.
In a large corp, as crappy as these apps are, they can go into use internally and process billions of dollars even though they're crappy to use. You then spend the next 10 years improving it.