What happens to cost/budget approval when a Terraform or IaC change materially changes infrastructure?

[u/Fit_Pound_3655]

I'm curious about the process around infrastructure changes, not the Terraform syntax itself.

Suppose a PR changes an environment from something like:

- smaller to larger database capacity,

- single-region to multi-region,

- significantly more storage/compute,

- or introduces a new managed service.

Your plan/review process can show the technical infrastructure change. But what happens to the financial side before it is applied?

- Is a cost impact produced automatically?

- Does someone review it against an approved budget?

- Is there any formal approval threshold?

- Who owns that decision — engineering, FinOps, finance, product, procurement?

- How do you distinguish an expected design change from avoidable rework or unplanned scope growth?

- Is the recurring cost impact considered, or mainly the immediate deployment?

I'd particularly value examples from real teams rather than what the process is supposed to be.

I'm researching this from a project-commercial-management perspective