I know there are going to always be differences depending on the particular size, staff etc, but i wanted to get feedback in general around:

In an environment where you have a production support team doing first line support and release management, is it better to simply have developers manage their own releases instead? In this case, its internal software at an insurance company but the question should be valid at any company, size, etc I think.

Currently, we have our production team do releases but there is an argument that its inefficient and that if you allowed developers the ability to do it, they will focus more on making it simple and efficient and avoid basically passing on scripts, etc to run to another team.

The counter argument is that if you don't have a check and balance, you could get a software team (or an individual) that doesn't a very hacky job about getting their software out there (making on the fly changes, not documenting the process, etc) and that by forcing the prod support team to do the actual release, it enforces consistency and proper checks and balances.

I know this is not a black or white issue but I wanted to see what folks thought on this so the discipline and consistency is there but without the feeling that an inefficient process is in place.