On Reddit Halo Bravo posted the following:
“Hey everyone - happy to chime in with an update and a little bit of context and transparency into process. Up front, I don’t have an exact ETA just yet, but will work to provide one in future blogs. We’re working with the multiplayer team on getting these in as fast a humanly possible - and Community BTB is next up - but it’s also worth noting that the teams that do this exact work (Multiplayer, Test, Services, and Forge) have all been going non-stop to deliver their respective components of the Hammer Storm update. We’ve got a good size team, but it takes everyone moving at 110% to deliver things like new game modes, Forge updates, service improvements, etc. (Which we hope you’re enjoying!)
Surely that doesn’t require much work?
When making games, “things” take quite a bit of work from a variety of teams. This will vary depending on engine and platform. To use BTB maps as the example here, once these are collected, they are first playtested with community members to ensure that basic things function correctly, map is playing well, nothing obviously broken, etc. If things need to be changed, we’ll work directly with the Forgers on changes, and start again. Breakout was a relatively quick process as Forgers didn’t need to worry about spawning. However with BTB, we’ve found that while many of the maps look incredible, they need a heavy amount of respawn work and adjustments - which means we can’t yet bring them into our internal environments for test passes, and they have to be tweaked and tested a bit more.
Once they’re ready, they’re brought into our internal pipeline and reviewed / playtested by the multiplayer team for quality, map flow, etc. If there are any changes that need to happen at this point, we’ll once again revisit with Forgers. The goal at this point, however, is to have brought in a map that is essentially MM ready so that we’re not spending man hours playtesting content that isn’t 100% ready.
After this, actual testing will begin, which means the H5 test team performs the full test passes that all Halo maps get before they’re released into matchmaking. This is a long checklist, but it ensures that everything works.
If these pass, the work will begin to actually build these into playlists, and once completed, the updated playlist then goes through playlist testing as well in the internal environments - things like matching, map / game type combos loading, playlist parameters, etc are tested here.
If everything passes, the updates will be slotted into future matchmaking updates and ready to be sent out the door.
This is a paraphrased version of the entire process, and I am no doubt missing many granular details. Once everything is brought inside, there are still weeks of work required to make sure that we’re delivering quality experiences in matchmaking. On top of that, the same guys and gals who bring you anything else related to multiplayer are the ones who do this work, so things like new game modes that are being requested have to be prioritized with playlist updates.
We love the BTB maps we’ve seen so far, and I’ll be sure to continue to provide updates on the maps and where we are in the process.
tl;dr: These things take a bit of time, but the team is working as fast as possible to ensure we’re getting you awesome stuff that plays and works well.”
Dont worry some one will rip on this soon
These posts that show transparency are always buried sadly.
What do u mean by transparency?
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> What do u mean by transparency?
just incase you actually dont know, it means you get to see what they are doing and the process they go through
nice to see some communication from 343, do they need money again? but in all seriousnes, GG Bravo.
As long as they keep to that tweet of adding req variants and UNSC air vehicle to forge/customs I will be happy. 
Oh and Warzone FF!
It’s great of Bravo to show us some insight into this whole process! Hopefully people will start to understand that implementing these changes isn’t as easy as taking random maps off of Fileshares and sticking them into a playlist.
A little communication goes a long way. Most of us don’t really consider the amount of testing they have to do. Having too much fun in grifball to worry about future updates honestly.
While it’s great to see this type of thing I can’t help but wonder if quality testing and insurance is “hampering” the overall gaming experience nowadays. (Not just from 343). Just a thought, could be completely misunderstanding how things work.
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> While it’s great to see this type of thing I can’t help but wonder if quality testing and insurance is “hampering” the overall gaming experience nowadays. (Not just from 343). Just a thought, could be completely misunderstanding how things work.
I valid point I shall say, but i think the thing that either enhances or diminishes game play when related to content is the rate at which the content is being delivered to the community. I feel that 343i is giving us a lot of content in short amounts of time so i feel it has a good enhancement of the game play. However, i feel that when the game was first released it was lacking that game play. It is really nice to see how fast they are giving us content though, because that really enhances our gaming experience.