It is easy to overlook the complexities of operating a SharePoint environment from the lens of the developer, especially in cases where solid governance, change management, and configuration management does not exist as part of your regular IT service management procedures. Worse yet, it is quite common for a developer to take on administrative roles, thereby making assumptions and taking shortcuts, often from the perspective of "well I know what to do" or "I wrote the code, so I know what's going on".
Tip
This approach leads to late nights, and extended periods of downtime. Everyone knows that this is not the proper deployment approach to take, but it is often followed. The management must enforce a written release policy unless they want an uncomfortable status meeting with the business owners of SharePoint applications.
The fact is that each solution or customization has some effect on the overall fidelity of the platform. It is important to understand the following classic conventions...