[whynotmaybe]

Yes, those rules always come from legal.

In some regulated places, someone is legally responsible for authorizing a change in production.

If it fails, that person's on the hook. So the usual way is to have a manual authorization for every change. Yes, it's a PITA.

One place I've worked changed their process to automatically allow changes in some specific parts for a specific period during the development of a new app.

And for some magical reasons, the person usually associated with such legal responsibility are the one that don't trust automatic process.