Personally I understand why WGT would not be more precise publishing release dates. They have one release date chiseled in stone contractually for the VUSO. All other course creation/testing work gets lower priority. And stuff happens like Valhalla.
They did say a long time ago it takes about 6 months to produce a full course. OK, 6 months from the time the full course photos are shot to release of a CTTH in March or April. But as far as I can tell the closest they came to 6 months from shoot to full course release was 7 months for Olympic after they took the photos in November and released it in June. And that was in WGT's backyard. Congressional was shot the previous May, 13 months before release.
I can imagine many things come in to play when scheduling a shoot. Course availability, course condition(if its a VUSO), photographer availability, weather patterns, contingency plans (you'd have to plan it early enough to have a 2nd date available later in case of bad weather). Its got to be a nightmare at times pulling a shoot off.
The delays of Bandon and PB were I believe due to the introduction of Valhalla at very short notice. Building a course requires different skill sets than writing, troubleshooting and fixing Flash game code logic.
Building a course is primarily editing the photos and creating standard data files with GPS coordinates for each photo. Lots of data entry and photo editing. Programmers only get involved adding the menu items for a new course. Should be pretty obvious the programmer/engineers were busy writing code for all the new CC stuff just released as well as trouble shooting and fixing problems. All that was done while Pinehurst2, Valhalla, and I assume Bandon Dunes were being produced.
On MisterWGT's blog is a picture of the Royal St. Georges ground photo crew of 7 photographers.
Add a couple of aerial photogs and we can see how 9 or 10 can do it. I don't recall WGT ever saying they need two dozen.
I'd be surprised if we see Bandon Dunes before October and Pebble before January.