Maintaining software dependencies and updating external packages and dependencies is something that nobody really wants to do, and it is often forgotten and neglegted. We would all much rather spend our time actually developing new, exiting stuff. But leaving you dependencies unmanaged can leave you with security issues, and prevent you from using some of the nice, new features that might make your code even better than it is today.

In this talk, we will dive into why managing external dependencies is a critical part of software development—even if it’s not always the most exciting thing to do. We will explore the risks of ignoring them and show you how automation can transform this chore into a seamless, time-saving process using Renovate.

To illustrate how this can look in practice, I will share our story of implementing automated dependency management in our own codebase, which is a part of Europe's critical infrastructure. You'll hear about how we integrated Renovate, the challenges we faced, and the benefits we've experienced since. We will also discuss some alternative strategies and cases where automated dependency management might not be the ideal choice, and eventually you will leave this talk equipped with practical strategies to start the automation journey yourself.