While setting up branch policies is definitely something you'll want to do in your own environments, sometimes, you may find that there is a need to bypass those policies. These times should not happen often, but when they do, there is a way to handle it. You can allow specific users (or a group of users) to bypass branch policies by configuring their branch access control settings.
To do that, you can set one or both of the following policies, depending on your requirements:
- Bypass policies when completing pull requests.
- Bypass policies when pushing code changes to the repository.
If the need to bypass branch policies arises, then my recommendation is to temporarily set these settings, and do it only for the users that need to perform the required task(s). Once the users perform the task(s) they need to do, turn off the preceding settings so that the branch policies are adhered to once again.
You can read more about this situation and how to handle it at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/repos/git/branch-policies?view=azure-devops#bypass-branch-policies.