I didn't downvote, but I disagree. You put forth the question of when a company might rightly not use terraform and I think I can answer that.
I think of terraform as a form of insurance. It's "Oops manual change" insurance. In the event that somebody breaks something in the console and you need to undo it, it's exponentially faster-easier. However you have to pay premiums to get this insurance as well as a setup cost.
So is the insurance worth it? It depends on the org. But I've seen small places where it's a small team that communicates well and nobody screws around in the console with stuff they don't understand (and if they break it they can own it). So there absolutely are places where the amount of time terraform costs you (in learning, setup, and extra PR time, waiting for atlantis to finish, locks) is higher cost than the time saved when you need.
No I didn't. Failing to adopt an IAC approach, which I have seen in my career many times, whether it's terraform or any of the other tools - comes down to organizational issues.
I'll pose a question to your snotty response - What specifically about terraform would lead to it failing to be implemented at a company? The answer to that will provide all you need.
I'm not being snotty. Terraform is not the best choice for every organization.
Rather, Terraform does not add value within every organizational structure. Not adding value is failing. Having a negative ROI is failing.
None of these infrastructure tools are perfect, and the ways in which they are imperfect mean that some are better or worse matches for an organization's needs.
Therefore your initial statement is oversimplified, presumptuous, and ultimately nonsensical. A logical reframing is "if your organization does not match Terraform's strengths, then your org is the problem", and that is clearly not true.
You're shifting goalposts now and still failed to answer my question. And since you seem to have cracked the long-known problem of measuring infrastructure/devops/etc. team performance (since apparently you have a way to measure the ROI on that) I'm assuming you're far above my expertise here and have it all figured out, and I'm in over my head and have clearly struck a nerve. Glad you figured out a problem that so many haven't! have a good day.
I think of terraform as a form of insurance. It's "Oops manual change" insurance. In the event that somebody breaks something in the console and you need to undo it, it's exponentially faster-easier. However you have to pay premiums to get this insurance as well as a setup cost.
So is the insurance worth it? It depends on the org. But I've seen small places where it's a small team that communicates well and nobody screws around in the console with stuff they don't understand (and if they break it they can own it). So there absolutely are places where the amount of time terraform costs you (in learning, setup, and extra PR time, waiting for atlantis to finish, locks) is higher cost than the time saved when you need.