Based on the #1 challenge identified in the State of FinOps, we are focusing our efforts this coming month on how to enable engineers to take action on cost optimizations. This effort will culminate with a 90-minute member call on March 2nd with more data and a panel discussion.
This was also a key topic on the member preview call where 420+ FinOps Practitioners attended an interactive discussion on survey data. I previewed early findings and the expert panel—including Jen Hayes (Fidelity), Abuna Demoz (Google Cloud), and Joe Daly (Nationwide)—weighed in with their take. Later that day, Mike Fuller (Atlassian) hosted a small but mighty group from Australia and New Zealand.
- Watch the video (member access only)
- Review the State of FinOps report (public microsite)
As discussed in the FinOps slack and on that call, the issue of engineering teams not taking action is a symptom, not the problem. Members have discussed that in order to enable them to take ongoing actions, the organization needs to be setup to prioritize cost optimization work balanced against other development needs.
Agenda for March 2 Call: Enabling Engineers to Take Action
We’ll open with additional data and findings from the State of FinOps, focusing especially on the “How do you get engineers to take action?” question which has hundreds of write-in responses. (15 mins)
There will be a panel of SMEs made up of engineers and finance professionals who drive the initiative in their respective organizations. (30 mins)
Key discussion points will include:
– How organizational priorities and exec sponsorship can be used to influence culture
– Ways to incentivize action (cultural or compensation)
– Making it easy via integrating optimization into backlogs
– Exploring how to integrate spend improvements into testing (estimate of spend impact based on architecture changes)
– Getting Product owners onboard
After the panel, a team from Comcast will share how they’ve gamified engineering action with a “Capture The Flag” program (15 mins). Finally we’ll end with open discussion of data and findings (30 mins).
Supporting Events and Webinars
Leading up to the March 2 call, a few vendor ecosystem partners are also hosting webinars on the the topic:
- February 9: FinOps Training: Solving the #1 FinOps Challenge (Densify)
- February 11: The Microsoft Azure Cloud Management Customer Roadshow (CloudHealth)
- February 23: NYC FinOps February Meetup led by Dann Berg (Datadog)
- February 25: How to build out a FinOps Practice (Apptio)
- March 2: FinOps Member Call: Enabling Engineers to Take Action (member invite to follow)
As we have additional confirmed speakers for the main member call, we’ll update details in the member invite. If you want to discuss content or ideas for this month’s theme, check out the Slack discussion in the #finops-for-engineers channel.
Looking forward to continuing working with the community to help enable optimization work by technical teams partnering with their finance counterparts.
As always, keep breaking down those silos.