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Data Analysis and Showback

Definition

Data analysis and showback is the ability to leverage data, along with metadata on cloud resources and resource hierarchies, to create a near “real time” reporting mechanism for stakeholders which calls to attention: Total costs for the desired business entity, opportunities for cost avoidance, and KPIs for financial health (e.g. performance of rate reduction commitments, unit cost measures for key services, efficiency metrics aggregated by desired “team”, organizational unit, etc…).

In the context of FinOps, this work will typically focus on the cloud cost and usage data. This Capability relies heavily upon adequate data ingestion and data normalization capabilities. The results from the work for Data Analysis & Showback will typically be available for Chargeback & IT Finance Integration.

It is within the scope of this Capability to create the data repository of normalized, queryable data from which reporting, analysis, and visualization of cloud cost and usage will occur. Many of the optimization capabilities and alignment with other organizational processes and systems will likewise rely upon the data sources created by this Capability.

Maturity Assessment

WHERE ARE ORGANIZATIONS IN TERMS OF MATURITY

Crawl

65.1%

Walk

21%

Run

13.9%

Responses showed organizations operating at a FinOps Run maturity, also had enabled all their personas to take advantage of self-service reporting for analysis of cloud cost data. FinOps Walk maturity was reflected in cohorts where cloud cost data reports were available across all personas but only a subset had the ability to leverage self-service reports for analysis. Restricted or no access to self-service reporting was reflected in organizations operating at a FinOps Crawl maturity


Crawl

Walk

Run


Functional Activity

As a FinOps Practitioner, I will…

As an Engineering Manager, I will…

As a Finance/Procurement Manager, I will…

As a Business/Product Manager, I will…

Measure(s) of Success & KPI

Measures of success are represented in the context of cloud costs and may include one or more key performance indicators ( KPI ), describe objectives with key results ( OKR ), and declare thresholds defining outliers or acceptable variance from forecasted trends.

Inputs

Get Involved

Get involved and contribute to the community by sharing your real world experiences related to this Capability in the form of a story or providing a playbook for how you have implemented best practices in your organization. Your real world experiences can be provided in the context of:

Join the conversation about this Capability in Slack . You can submit stories, how-tos and suggest improvements using one of the options for contributing here.

Related Domains

Featured Resources

Driving Visibility, Accountability & Transparency with Data - Jenna Gegg (Salesforce)

Driving Visibility, Accountability & Transparency with Data - Jenna Gegg (Salesforce)

Enabling a Culture of Cloud Cost Transparency - Vik Saluja (Cigna)

Enabling a Culture of Cloud Cost Transparency - Vik Saluja (Cigna)

FinOpsPod, Episode 15 Zach Stitham - Driving FinOps Culture Through KPIs

FinOpsPod, Episode 15 Zach Stitham - Driving FinOps Culture Through KPIs

The OPTICS around cost visibility - Steph Gooch (AWS)

The OPTICS around cost visibility - Steph Gooch (AWS)

Capability Assets