Maybe someone else has already mentioned but anyway... The things I do: - Lambda event passed to your lambda_handler is just a big json, get it and copy it somewhere, and then you can test your code locally. ( lambda_handler(your_event, None) ) - If there are some things you cannot do locally, use some flags to handle them. (You may use: MessageGroupId from the lambda event for example) - Prepare a deploy script and use it. (aws lambda update-function-code ...)