An interview study with infrastructure as code (IaC) practitioners in Bangladesh

Abstract

The DevOps paradigm promotes automated software engineering practices such as infrastructure as code (IaC) to rapidly deploy software to the end users. IaC focuses on automatically provisioning and managing computing infrastructure with machine-readable files. Despite its popularity among organizations, there is a lack of understanding of how the technology is adopted by the software developers. We address this gap by conducting an interview study with 24 professional software developers in Bangladesh who use IaC tools. We report 13 adoption factors and techniques used by these professionals, including compliance, code review, and usage of AI, that have not been reported in the prior literature. We found that IaC has a steep learning curve and in addition to monetary factors such as automation and rapid deployment, non-monetary factors such as transparency play an important role in the adoption of IaC. While these professionals have a preference for open source IaC tools, their transition from one tool to another is influenced by a variety of factors. We conclude by discussing the implications for designing more reliable tools for IaC as well as the need for community-driven e!orts to enhance the experience of the practitioners.