I'm an Software Architect and it doesn't matter if we restart a project 3 times, the only thing the business people care about is the time we were allotted to complete the project.
So in practical terms, yes, they've been working on it for 8 years. From a business and consumer perspective that's how long it took to get here.
Not really saying anything for or against TW - it's a reality that sometimes you have to scrap your progress and 'restart' - just saying that in the software engineering world all the time/resources spent on a project is considered the cost of that project. Not just from the last time you restart a project.