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12. Establish OpsDev.nz as an R&D lab and shared infrastructure initiative

Date: 2025-08-20

Status

Accepted

Context

StartMeUp.nz requires a dedicated environment to research, prototype, and trial infrastructure management approaches before adopting them in production. Many of the startups and community projects we work with face similar early-stage challenges: DNS setup, CI/CD pipelines, secrets management, observability, and basic back-office integrations.

Rather than each team reinventing the wheel, or outsourcing everything to SaaS platforms, which can fragment knowledge and create long-term costs, we want a shared initiative that:

  • Functions as an R&D lab for exploring new tools, workflows, and operational practices.
  • Publishes learnings and patterns so others can adopt and adapt them.
  • Gradually curates reusable, production-ready modules that support both StartMeUp.nz and the wider startup ecosystem.

There are costs associated with managing this infrastructutre that we will manage under this project in Open Collective.

Decision

We will establish OpsDev.nz as an initiative under StartMeUp.nz with two complementary roles:

  1. R&D Lab mode – a structured space to experiment with infrastructure tools, patterns, and IaC modules, producing documented learnings and reference designs.
  2. Applied Infrastructure mode – over time, refine and publish hardened, reusable modules and reference configurations that startups (and StartMeUp.nz itself) can confidently adopt.

OpsDev.nz will be:

  • Version-controlled and open by default, with sensitive config kept private.
  • Incrementally bootstrapped (starting with DNS, CI/CD, secrets, logging).
  • Governed by StartMeUp.nz but open to community contributions.

Consequences

Positive outcomes:

  • Positions StartMeUp.nz as an innovation hub for infrastructure and operations practices.
  • Provides a clear learning pathway for early-stage teams through shared, documented experiments.
  • Reduces repeated effort across multiple small organisations.
  • Lets StartMeUp.nz evaluate solutions before committing to production use.
  • Reinforces our “infrastructure as code” culture.

Risks / Trade-offs:

  • R&D activities may drift into unfocused exploration without clear criteria for adoption.
  • Additional maintenance overhead to keep experimental and production contexts aligned.
  • Risk of scope creep if every experiment is preserved indefinitely.

Mitigations:

  • Clear documentation of what is experimental (R&D) vs. production-ready.
  • Lightweight governance for accepting shared modules and promoting them to “ops defaults.”
  • Periodic pruning of experiments that are no longer relevant or valuable.
  • Managed transparently as an Open Collective project under the StartMeUp.nz umbrella, ensuring costs and contributions are shared and visible.