I've managed my share of software development projects. While I always try to take a proactive approach to deadlines and decisions, sometimes you are at the mercy of the project sponsor. After reading Seth Godin's article, Hurry!, I had to laugh. How many of us have been, or worked for people, in this mode? I have a title for myself when I'm working for clients that work like this..."Fireman." We've all seen it "Oh no! A client found a bug in our beta release! Drop everything and fix it!" or "Marketing decided that our app that will launch in 2 months need to have a purple color scheme! Drop everything and make it happen!" Managers that are in this mode often fail to think about the impact of these "urgent" decisions. They are only looking at WHAT is being asked of them without any thought to WHY. I (like Seth) feel that if these people don't ask WHY it's because they don't want the responsibility of dealing with the ramifications. For example, if we don't make the app purple, then marketing can say that the reason it didn't sell was it wasn't purple. It's a prime example of CYA behavior. They feel that if they do exactly what is being asked of them, they take no responsibility for failure. How many successful people do you know blindly follow directions without question? Food for thought.