Terraform gets interesting the moment a second person touches it. Modules need boundaries, state needs protection, and “just apply it” needs to disappear from the team vocabulary.

Module Design

Keep modules small and focused. A good module should:

  • Do one thing well
  • Have clear inputs and outputs
  • Include documentation and examples

State Management

Use remote state with locking. For AWS, S3 + DynamoDB is the standard:

terraform {
  backend "s3" {
    bucket         = "my-terraform-state"
    key            = "prod/infrastructure.tfstate"
    region         = "us-east-1"
    encrypt        = true
    dynamodb_table = "terraform-locks"
  }
}

CI/CD Integration

  • Run terraform plan on every PR
  • Require approval before apply
  • Use workspaces or separate state files per environment

Coming soon: More details on team workflows and cost estimation.