In an interesting post to his blog Kyle Brandt asks a question universally debated by system administrators everywhere - should developers have access to production?

A question that comes up again and again in web development companies is: 'Should the developers have access to the production environment, and if they do, to what extent?' My view on this is that as a whole they should have limited access to production. A little disclaimer before I attempt to justify this view is that this standpoint is in no way based on the perceived quality or attitude of the developers '" so please don't take it this way.

He talks about common excuses from developers like "we've had access before" and "we need access to troubleshoot" as well as some of the process restricting the access could create. He touches on a few other issues including developer concerns vs those of the sysadmin, change control issues and the responsibilities of the sysadmin administrators if they want to allow the developers to poke around their servers.

Be sure to check out some of the other great suggestions in the comments too!