I don't disagree with you in general and that's the way I've worked in the past. I think it is a situation peculiar to my current place of work where everything gets deployed using a one-click approach - a .MSI file that runs all the deployment utilities under the covers. This is probably because there is no DBA (yes, you read that right :w00t:) and so they want as little manual involvement as possible.
Andrew Notarian (1/30/2014)
At this exact moment I am working on the best way to deal with configuration changes from environment to environment so that the compiled ETL code (i.e. the DTSX files) can remain the same with only the config changes.
If you are using SQL 2012 you can do this using Environments, Environment Variables and Parameters. If you're using 2005/2008 then Package Configurations are the way to go.
Regards
Lempster