Let's start at the development stage. When you're working on old applications, you usually have to go through the following steps before writing the first line of code:

1. Install the required tools in your local machine.
2. Set up all the required dependencies.
3. Create one or more configuration files.
4. Discover all the missing parts that were not listed as part of the documentation.
5. Load the test data.
6. Run the application.

Now, let's say you're working as part of a team that owns many microservices that are written in different programming languages and that use different database technologies. Can you imagine the effort required before writing your first line of code?

Using microservices is supposed to be able to provide you with faster solutions, but all the setup required makes it slower initially. For a large monolithic application, you only have to set up one environment, but for heterogeneous applications, you'll have to set up many different environments. In order to approach this problem effectively, you need to embrace a culture of automation. Instead of executing all the aforementioned steps manually, you can run a script to do that for you. In this way, every time you want to work on a different project, you only need to execute the script instead of repeating all the steps listed.

Adopting tools such as the ones mentioned in the preceding tip will have a great impact on the productivity of the development team. You don't want developers wasting their time by providing their own environments; instead, you want them writing code to add new features to your product.