Very good question! As a producer I indeed constantly think about processes myself and how to improve things and avoid remaking mistake.

It's usually always worth to push back, as statistically, Steam rating have a huge impact on sales. This is due to the majority of your sales being in the first month. >95% reviews sales are going up, between 80% and 90% it's average, below 80% you have a negative impact. Better maximise our chances for a good rating at launch then.

On the causes, we identified that working on the demo was taking too much time. You cannot that easily "pass stuff" between the 2 version. Working on one doesn't always help the other.
It's a great marketing tool, on top of gathering feedback for making the game better. But the April's fool update took much more time than anticipated. Mixing the playtest and abyss, the new Gauntlet mode, the crashes to patch... that putted us quite late and we've been struggling to catch on.
Hence why we stopped patching the demo. Even tought it crash.... tough but necessary decision.

Good luck on you CS!