DOP-C02 SDLC Automation Practice Question
A team is using AWS CloudFormation to manage infrastructure. They want to implement a change management process where any modifications to the stack must be reviewed and approved. Which feature should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse Stack Policies (which protect resources from accidental updates) with a change review mechanism, but Stack Policies do not provide a preview or approval step—they only block certain updates at execution time.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Change Sets
Change Sets allow you to preview how proposed changes to a CloudFormation stack will impact your running resources before you execute them. This enables a review-and-approve workflow because you can generate a change set, have a team member or automated process inspect the list of resource additions, modifications, or deletions, and then either execute or discard the change set. This directly supports the required change management process.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Change Sets
Why this is correct
Change Sets let you preview the exact changes CloudFormation will make to a stack before executing them. When you create a change set, CloudFormation compiles a list of actions (add/remove/modify resources) that you can review in JSON or summary form, and you can approve, edit, or delete it without touching live infrastructure. This makes them the ideal mechanism for an approval-based change workflow, because the set can be submitted to a reviewer who validates it before the stack update is actually run.
- ✗
StackSets
Why it's wrong here
StackSets are used to deploy identical stacks across multiple AWS accounts and regions from a single CloudFormation template, ensuring consistent infrastructure at scale. They manage the lifecycle of those stacks but do not provide a pre-deployment review or approval step for changes to an individual stack. While you can update a StackSet, the change is applied directly to all target stacks without the granular per-stack preview that Change Sets offer, so they do not satisfy an approval workflow requirement.
- ✗
Drift Detection
Why it's wrong here
Drift Detection compares the actual current state of a stack's resources against the intended state defined in the CloudFormation template, flagging any differences that were introduced outside of CloudFormation. It is a read-only diagnostic tool that reports drift after the fact, but it does not intercept, preview, or control changes before they are applied. Since it gives no opportunity to approve an upcoming modification, it cannot serve as the approval mechanism the team needs.
- ✗
Stack Policy
Why it's wrong here
Stack Policies protect resources during a stack update by specifying which resources may be updated or replaced, acting as a form of guardrail against accidental changes. However, they are performant as deny rules that are evaluated during an update, not as a review step where you see a list of planned changes and approve them. A Stack Policy can block certain operations, but it does not generate a change summary or require approval before the update proceeds, so it is not equivalent to a Change Set.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every DOP-C02 question from scratch — 251 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DOP-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DOP-C02 exam.