I feel this pain, I really do. I want to turn around to fix quickly. The problem is unless you have fully-automated continuous deployment, 30 minutes is not 30

I feel this pain, I really do. I want to turn around to fix quickly. The problem is unless you have fully-automated continuous deployment, 30 minutes is not 30 minutes. That 30 minute task needs to be vetted to ensure it doesn’t affect other departments, then it needs to be scheduled, announced, and deployed, which may involve 2 to 3 other people. As a scheduled task it’s closer to 2 hours across multiple people. As a hotfix or support ticket, it which becomes 4~6 hours of lost productivity for a hotfix if there is any kind of QA process beyond automated tests. Add in six other people asking for “30 minute tasks” that have unknown impact on other people in the company and nothing will ever get done. My team has workflows for hotfix changes, but it truly needs to be a drop-everything emergency that stops the company from operating. For all but the blindingly obvious, a department, head or higher, must make the request. Not being able to turn around every urgent ticket is far less damaging than having a fix for one person cause problems for several other people or not delivering on large strategically-critical projects.