How does concurrency control work?

This question originally appeared in the comments of the article: Git for Shared Development Environments

Hi, @Timothy Leavitt 
You wrote:

• Concurrency control for multiple users working in the same environment at the same time. Once you make changes to a class/routine/etc., it's yours until you discard or commit your changes. (We do have ways around this when needed, though!)

I'm trying to find any documentation about "(We do have ways around this when needed, though!)" part, and it looks like it's never mentioned anywhere else apart from the quoted paragraph. I can't find any relevant commands in the extension menus either. Is there any way to go around the "Some.Class.CLS is currently checked out by user 'someuser' " notice, other than removing the class temporarily from tracking or asking a team-member to immediately commit his changes?