Hotfix

A small, targeted code change deployed directly to a production environment to resolve an urgent bug or outage, outside the normal release cycle. Hotfixes are a key part of a fix-forward approach: rather than waiting for the next scheduled release, the team patches the specific issue as quickly as possible and ships it immediately. In teams with high release cadence, having a reliable hotfix process is a form of quality infrastructure.

For example: pushing a one-line change to correct a broken payment calculation within hours of it being reported; or deploying a config update to fix a permissions error that is locking users out of their accounts.