And as soon as you do, everyone thinks that their problem is a good candidate for the critical hot-fix path. At the very least, you now have to sink minutes per day into arguing them down from using it. Worth it? Possibly. But not always.
The operations team will spend a few months saying "no" a lot and justifying their decisions to management. Eventually it will slow to a trickle except for a few really stupid people who lack reading comprehension and any sense of pattern detection. Management will eventually get tired of it and forbid the stupid ones from making hot-fix requests.
Step One is "Act Intelligently."
No process is going to help you skip Step One.
Midnight. Y2K. Daylight Savings Time change. Leap Day. Congress changes when Daylight Savings Time happens and one component in the system didn't know about it. Year 2038 problem.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
Mayor: All right, all right! I get the point!
> It [sic] we don't do this right away, we'll have to have a layoff.
As a company, it's great to have a process for incremental changes, but you also need to have a process for critical hot-fixes.
You're a phone company, and adding a new feature should take months. I get that.
You're a phone company, and because of an unforeseen Cinderella problem, 10% of your customers can't make phone calls. At all.
It is unacceptable to have a one-size-fits-all process, no matter what your business is.