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Review infrastructure-as-code changes by checking both the configuration diff and the plan it produces. Confirm that every planned addition, update, replacement, or deletion matches the stated intent, then assess security, operational impact, state handling, and approval controls. Treat a pull-request plan as provisional: inspect the concrete plan again after merge, before applying.
Start with the change’s intent and scope
Before examining individual resources, establish what the author intends to change and where. Read the pull request description and identify the affected environment, dependencies, owners, and expected outcome. A reviewer should be able to explain what problem the change solves and what observable result will show that it worked.
- Is the target environment clear, such as development, staging, or production?
- Are the scope and dependencies identified, including resources managed elsewhere?
- Does the expected outcome make it possible to judge whether the plan is appropriate?
Terraform’s collaboration guidance describes pull requests and speculative plans as part of a team review workflow: Collaborate with Terraform.
Read the configuration diff, then verify the plan
The code diff shows what the author changed in configuration; the plan shows the infrastructure actions Terraform expects to take. Review both. A small-looking edit can have a large effect if it changes a shared module, provider, default, or dependency.
Review the configuration
- Check resource declarations, module and provider changes, input defaults, and dependency relationships.
- Look for changes to permissions, network exposure, storage, encryption, and secret handling.
- Confirm the change is scoped clearly and follows the team’s conventions.
Review every planned action
Compare planned additions, in-place updates, replacements, and deletions with the stated intent. Investigate unexpected resource counts, broad scope, dependency changes, and values that remain unknown until apply. Replacement or destruction deserves particular scrutiny: determine what will be lost, whether service interruption is possible, and whether the timing requires a maintenance window, monitoring, or notification.
HashiCorp notes that a plan reviewed on a pull request can differ from the one later applied because of merge order or intervening infrastructure changes. Its core Terraform workflow describes reviewing the concrete plan after merge, before apply.
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Assess security and policy evidence
Review security in the context of the workload, not just the presence of a green check. Confirm that permissions grant only the actions and resource access the workload requires; check whether a change exposes a service or data more broadly than intended; and consider how credentials and sensitive values are handled.
- Are secrets kept out of source code and, where possible, out of state? Are sensitive outputs handled appropriately?
- Do static scans and applicable policy checks cover this change, and are any findings understood and resolved?
- Does the plan introduce public access, weaker encryption, or a wider permission scope?
AWS recommends scanning infrastructure and source code and using policy checks as governance controls. These checks add evidence, but reviewers still need to decide whether the rules fit the actual workload. See AWS security best practices for infrastructure as code.
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Understand what policy checks can and cannot do
Policy-as-code can evaluate proposed infrastructure before deployment. AWS describes using Open Policy Agent (OPA) to evaluate structured Terraform plan JSON against policy logic. That is a preventive layer, not a substitute for runtime monitoring, organizational guardrails, or controls on deployed resources: Governing infrastructure as code using pattern-based policy as code.
When assessing a review workflow or tool, determine whether checks inspect source configuration, generated plans, live resources, or more than one layer; whether findings warn or block; which providers and workflows are supported; how access to state and credentials is controlled; and who owns remediation. A check’s result is only useful if the team understands its coverage and follows up on findings.
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Check state handling and execution controls
Terraform state can contain sensitive values, so verify that its backend has appropriate protection and access controls. Where concurrent operations are possible, confirm that the backend supports locking and that the workflow uses it. Backend capabilities vary; HashiCorp’s Terraform collaboration guidance discusses remote state encryption and locking.
Make sure the execution path is clear: who can apply the change, what approvals are required, and how the applied plan will be monitored. Review approvals and policy checks as part of a coherent control process rather than treating any one check as sufficient.
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Use a consistent review checklist
Adapt these checks to your providers, workload criticality, and organizational controls:
- Does the change description state intent, scope, environment, and expected outcome?
- Does the plan make the intended changes without unexplained replacement or destruction?
- Could the change disrupt service, expose data, widen network access, or alter a critical dependency?
- Are permissions limited to the workload’s required actions and resources?
- Are secrets, sensitive outputs, and state handled appropriately?
- Have relevant scans and policy checks run, and are their findings addressed?
- Are state encryption, access controls, and locking appropriate for the chosen backend?
- Are the right reviewers and approvals in place, and will the post-merge plan be checked before apply?
AWS Well-Architected recommends defining review timing, participants, criteria, approval rules, and ways to improve the process over time: SEC11-BP04: Conduct code reviews.
Approve against evidence and recheck before apply
Approve only when the code, plan, security evidence, and execution controls support the intended outcome. Record unresolved risks or required follow-up rather than leaving them implicit. For higher-risk changes, coordinate monitoring and notifications with the people responsible for the service.
After merge, inspect the concrete plan against the latest configuration and shared state before applying it. If it no longer matches what was reviewed, pause and review the changed effects before proceeding. Terraform’s policy overview lists Terraform policy, Sentinel, and OPA and labels Terraform policy beta; it also cautions against using beta functionality in production. Check the current framework status and platform support before relying on implementation-specific behavior: Define policies overview.
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