How one reviewer reads a Terraform plan: replacements, security rules, scale, then deletions

A reviewer who now approves infrastructure changes for a living says they no longer read Terraform plans from top to bottom. They first check resources marked for replacement, since these are destroyed and recreated, and then examine security group and IAM changes line by line. Next they look for growth in count or for_each values, which can signal large cost increases, and finally they scrutinize any deletions of resources that hold data. The author's central advice is that a plan too long to review should be split into smaller changes, because long plans tend to get approved without being properly read.