Breaking down

This afternoon I was called into an emergency meeting with management (not mine) to discuss an urgent deliverable that is needed by Friday EOD. Apparently someone forgot a key piece of our application requirements and with out this one piece, all is lost - or so I'm told.

I got involved because in another life I wrote some software that solved a similar problem. And now management wants to see if we (I.e.me) can make changes to it by Friday.

If there is one thing that bothers me the most about organizations, it's lack of having a thought out plan that leads to unnecessary urgency. Before joining the project I was told by hand-waving leadership that the Agile development process all but eliminated unscheduled fire-fights. That is not true. Only really smart, organized leadership can see around corners and stubbornly stick to a process. Unfortunately for us, the honeymoon is over, management is giving in and we are deviating back to gun slinging.