Anti-patterns for dynamic environment provisioning

• Manual environment management: Relying on manual provisioning and management of environments, or using uncoordinated scripts, can introduce inconsistencies and inefficiencies. Manual approaches are prone to errors and can slow down development. It's vital to transition towards an automated, code-based approach for environment management. This ensures enhanced repeatability and reliability, and also allows teams to maintain a consistent pace of development, ultimately reducing operational overheads.

• Inflexible environment provisioning: Provisioning one-size-fits-all environments without considering the unique needs of different workloads or teams can restrict the ability of workloads to operate optimally. Not taking into account the diverse requirements of different teams or workloads can result in inefficiencies, operational burdens, and slowed innovation. Instead, a dynamic provisioning approach tailored to the specific needs of each workload, combined with equipping developers with self-service capabilities, can greatly improve resource utilization and cost efficiency.

• Bypassing non-production testing for environment changes: Implementing changes directly in the production landing zone or to environment baselines without prior testing in a mirrored non-production environment exposes the organization to unnecessary risks. Always test these large-scale changes in a safe, non-production environment to identify potential issues and mitigate them before they impact the production environment.

• Allowing configuration drift: Deviations in environment configurations can creep in due to manual changes or lack of consistent monitoring. This drift can compromise security, increase maintenance complexity, and lead to unpredictable outcomes. To counteract this, adopt tools and practices that continuously baseline environments to maintain the desired state and enforce uniform configurations.

• Fragmented self-service tools: Providing multiple, disjointed self-service tools for developers to manage environments can create confusion, result in inefficiencies, and make it harder to enforce standards and best practices. Integrating these functionalities into a unified developer portal helps ensure consistent practices, better governance, and smoother operations. This unified portal could include self-service capabilities from development lifecycle, quality assurance, and observability best practices, streamlining the developer experience.