What is ClickOps?
ClickOps is a term used to describe when cloud infrastructure engineers—often part of a DevOps team—make manual changes directly in a cloud provider’s user interface. These changes can range from small tweaks to critical configuration edits, and are made by clicking around in the provider’s web console instead of using infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tools.
ClickOps may be seen as a more accessible or “simpler” method of change, especially when:
- Team members lack experience with IaC or deployment automation,
- Automation tools are not yet in place,
- Or there's urgency—like during outages, fire drills, or transitional events (e.g. mergers).
Common Scenarios for ClickOps:
- Lack of automation tools or missing system knowledge.
- Firefighting during high-pressure incidents.
- Cloud or team reorganization, such as post-merger adjustments.
Examples of ClickOps:
- Making infrastructure changes via the AWS Management Console.
- Editing or deleting security groups manually through the cloud UI.
- Provisioning resources without IaC tools like Terraform or Pulumi.
To put it concretely: a cloud engineer manually configures a new virtual machine in the AWS console. Another security engineer adjusts firewall rules by hand. Meanwhile, a DevOps teammate in another region sets up IAM roles—all without coordination or automation.
In a fast-moving, distributed cloud environment, the potential for these untracked manual changes is nearly limitless—and so are the associated risks.
🚨 Six ClickOps Hidden Risks
When individual engineers make manual changes—large or small—through cloud consoles, the potential for unintended consequences increases fast.
Here are six major risks associated with ClickOps:
1️⃣ Productivity Drain
Manual work slows down deployments and ongoing management.
Take the example of an engineer manually provisioning a new Amazon EC2 instance. That might work for one, but what about 20, 50, or 100 instances?
Engineers end up:
- Wasting time navigating multiple UIs and docs
- Relying on “generate-and-test” to overcome vague documentation or UI changes
- Losing tribal knowledge when experienced engineers leave
2️⃣ Lack of Repeatability
Manual changes leave no clear audit trail.
Without logs or versioning, no one knows who did what, when, or why. This lack of visibility creates massive headaches during incident response and compliance audits.
3️⃣ Increased Human Errors
ClickOps increases the surface area for misconfigurations and manual mistakes—even among skilled engineers.
These errors can result in:
- Downtime
- Security issues
- Bug hunts
- Disaster recovery cycles
4️⃣ Compliance and Security Risks
ClickOps actions often bypass security checks and compliance gates that exist in automated pipelines.
As a result, even well-meaning changes may introduce violations, security gaps, or shadow infrastructure.
5️⃣ Drift from IaC
Even if your organization has adopted Terraform or another Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach, ClickOps can still silently undermine it.
Manual changes lead to:
- Configuration drift that’s hard to track
- Broken automation pipelines
- Divergence from your desired infrastructure state
If you’re already seeing signs of this, it's worth diving deeper into the mechanics and solutions. Here’s a definitive guide on Terraform drift detection that explains how to identify, prevent, and fix these issues at scale.
6️⃣ Cost Sprawl
ClickOps adds unseen operational costs due to:
- Manual, repetitive tasks
- Inconsistent configurations
- Increased rework and rollbacks
- Scaling challenges
- Risk and incident response overhead
🔍 How to Identify ClickOps in Your DevOps Team
Some signs are obvious:
Teams manage cloud resources manually because IaC isn't in place.
Others are more subtle:
After a lift-and-shift migration (e.g., post-M&A), engineers may make one-off manual changes “just for now.” These go unnoticed—until systems start to behave unexpectedly.
🕵️♂️ Red Flags to Watch For
- Teams prefer cloud consoles over automated workflows
- Frequent configuration drift incidents
- Infrastructure changes lack version control
- Engineers spend excessive time fixing manual errors
- Compliance teams can't answer: “Who changed what, when, and why?”
📣 Are you seeing any of these ClickOps patterns in your org?
Let’s talk in the comments 👇
Or read more: What is ClickOps and how to face it
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