firefighting

n. 1. What sysadmins have to do to correct sudden operational problems. An
opposite of hacking. Been hacking your new newsreader? No, a power glitch
hosed the network and I spent the whole afternoon fighting fires. 2. The act
of throwing lots of manpower and late nights at a project, esp. to get it
out before deadline. See also gang bang , Mongolian Hordes technique ;
however, the term firefighting connotes that the effort is going into
chasing bugs rather than adding features.