Terraform and other IaC tools are the right choice for provisioning and maintaining infrastructure state; they’re the wrong tool for day-2 operational requests - one-off access grants, IP whitelisting, cleanup tasks - that don’t belong in your infrastructure’s desired state. DevAutOps handles that second category without turning every request into a pull request.
Terraform is very good at one thing: describing what your infrastructure should look like, and reconciling reality toward that description. Plenty of teams, having gotten good at that, start reaching for it for everything else too - and that’s usually where friction starts.
What Terraform is built for
Infrastructure state: the VPCs, databases, clusters, and networking rules that should exist and stay consistent over time. A plan-and-apply cycle, code review, and version-controlled state are exactly the right amount of ceremony for changes like that.
Where teams over-extend it
That same ceremony is the wrong amount for a one-time or human-triggered request: whitelisting an IP, granting temporary access, cleaning up a stale resource. Routing those through a Terraform pull request means a plan, a review, and an apply for something that’s really just "yes, do this specific thing now" - and it means the person asking has to know Terraform at all.
How to tell the difference
A useful test: does the change describe what your infrastructure should permanently look like, or does it describe a specific action someone wants performed right now? The first belongs in Terraform. The second is a better fit for a governed, self-service app.
How the two combine
Most teams end up running both side by side: Terraform provisions and maintains the infrastructure, and DevAutOps governs the operational requests people make against it afterward - without either one pretending to be the other.
Frequently asked questions
Can DevAutOps automate cloud operations without writing Terraform?
Yes - DevAutOps generates and executes operational tasks like access changes, IP whitelisting, and cleanup directly, without requiring a Terraform module or pull request for each one.
Is DevAutOps a replacement for Terraform?
No - they solve different problems. Terraform provisions and maintains infrastructure state; DevAutOps governs the day-2 operational requests people make against infrastructure that already exists.
How do I decide whether something belongs in Terraform or in a self-service app?
Ask whether the change describes what your infrastructure should permanently look like (Terraform) or a specific action someone wants performed right now (a self-service app).
Do most teams use Terraform and DevAutOps together?
Yes - it’s a common pairing. Terraform handles provisioning and state; DevAutOps handles the repeatable operational requests that come up afterward.
See how this applies: Perform AWS, Azure & GCP Operations by Describing Them in Plain English
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