actually, that's different from my reading. Chris's message was:
"I have corrected several minor bugs found in process, but a huge change around the upgrade process is currently underway."
AFAIK what happened is that the module was not failed, as it could install and be used succesfully. However, the setup necessary to migrate existing forum settings to the new module (i.e. the upgrade process), was long and involved, and there was a potential for issues (I know that there were some problems understanding how to do this on our staging server, particularly around the use of custom permissions - and if we're struggling to work it out, it means there will be lots of support issues from other users). This was communicated to Chris, who decided to refactor the upgrade process to make it much easier. This was his choice, and one I applaud, as I'm sure he took it knowing that long-term it would benefit all the users, but in the short-term it would be a cause of complaint with people moaning about missed dates etc.
Typically what will then happen is that once his changes are finished, Chris will request that the current release be failed in the tracker (and we'll record that it was via project leader request), and will then add the new version to the tracker. This will then go through the testing again, but will process much quicker than before, as testing can be done based on the difference between the versions (e.g. I'll probably do the security testing in an hour, rather than an few days as per the last release). If all the resources are available, this 2nd round of testing will probably only take a few days, and if succesful, we'll see some dogfooding followed by release.
Cathal