By Danielle Cook
Traditional approaches to governance, such as Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) approaches that created a set of detailed practices for IT service and asset management, were overly restrictive and ultimately slowed development teams down. This model is counterproductive in cloud native environments, and platform engineers and developers alike are understandably cautious about adopting new governance models that they believe could slow down delivery in a fast-paced development and delivery environment. 
As organizations increasingly adopt Kubernetes to build and deliver cloud-native applications fast, they understand both the strategic importance of the technology they’re deploying as well as the need to manage costs and align to overall business needs. So how can they adopt guardrails to keep everything running smoothly without putting roadblocks in front of their development teams? What if cloud native governance actually worked more like the guardrails we have on curvy mountain roads. You may never need them, but they’re right there to stop you from hurtling off the cliff — or in software development, deploying code with security vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, compliance violations, and likely to result in excessive cloud costs.
