I agree that it's worth being careful on mission-critical code, but this isn't being careful, it's just box-ticking. Ed said he'd tested the actual change, but most of the time is taken up by shifting it out to some parameters file, lengthening its name and waiting for permissions.
No one seems to have pointed this out yet, but the code that runs your manufacturing line is indeed "mission critical". Furthermore it's likely that your customers demand that you have strict processes in place for changes, and can actually audit you at their pleasure. So being so bureaucratic about it is not surprising.
The Web 2.0 world works very differently, of course.
To clarify, I'm not suggesting that it's not mission critical, just that I don't believe that that kind of process is actually making things any safer.
