The most expensive phrase in cloud infrastructure is "we'll clean it up later"

I've heard it in every account I've worked with

A dev environment gets created for a sprint. We'll clean it up later

A service gets deployed with debug logging enabled. We'll turn that down later

A database gets provisioned at a size that's too large for current needs because the cost of under-provisioning feels riskier than the cost of over-provisioning. We'll rightsize it later

Later never comes. Not because the team is irresponsible. Because later becomes now and now is always full

The sprint ends and the next sprint starts. The debug logging produces useful information once and now removing it feels risky.…