Adhering too tightly to the requirements

I've been really busy at work the past month plus - but I'm employed, so my complaints are few.

Read this article and watch the video (also on youtube).  The part that really troubled me was when the engineer says "this is just bad engineering" and the manager says:

That might be, but I can’t afford to worry about that. My job is to make sure the project follows this plan from start to finish.

There are two sad parts to this.  First, that this was a real event that happened at NASA.  Second, that I've seen some of this same behavior at big companies I've worked at before.  The management adheres to the process, and all the documentation they have, even in the face of contradicting data.  

As a test engineer, that is especially abhorrent to me: valid data is what I work to create for a living.  For a manager to favor process over data is just wrong.