How a 12-person platform team eliminated 80% of manual Terraform changes

The Challenge

The platform team at a Series B FinTech company was responsible for managing 200+ Terraform modules across 3 AWS accounts. Engineers spent 60% of each sprint creating, reviewing, and debugging repetitive infrastructure changes — leaving little time for architectural improvements or developer experience work.

The Solution

AstraOps connected to their Terraform state and GitHub repositories in read-only mode. Within the first week, it identified 47 optimization opportunities across their modules. Each suggestion was delivered as a pull request with full security controls, compliance checks, and rollback instructions. The team set up approval gates requiring two senior engineer reviews before any change could be merged.

Results

• 80% reduction in manual Terraform PR creation
• Sprint velocity increased by 35% within 2 months
• Zero security incidents from automated changes
• Average PR review time dropped from 4 hours to 45 minutes
• Team reallocated 3 engineers to platform improvement work

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We went from drowning in Terraform busywork to spending our time on architecture that actually moves the needle. And the approval gates mean we never feel like we've lost control.