This is a very DevOps approach, and in this case, Amazon has taken on the role of "Ops." If a developer wants to make an environmental change, they modify the project's source, and then tell Amazon to recycle the environment. Everything shuts down, and a whole new, fresh environment spins up. It's completely documented, so if it works the way the dev wants, then it'll be perfect when it's used for test, production, or anything else. And, in a typical cloud-centric way, Ops - that is, Amazon - doesn't have to be manually involved in any way. They've created automation interfaces that let any authorized user spin up whatever they want.