FinOps Maturity Model

The practice of FinOps is inherently iterative and maturity of any given process, functional activity, Capability or Domain will improve with repetition.

A “Crawl, Walk, Run” approach to performing FinOps enables organizations to start small, and grow in scale, scope, and complexity as business value warrants maturing a functional activity. Taking quick action at a small scale and limited scope allows FinOps teams to assess the outcomes of their actions, and to gain insights into the value of taking further action in a larger, faster, or more granular way.

In assessing the state of an organization’s FinOps Capability or Domain, we can also use these maturity designations to identify where we are currently operating, and to identify areas we’d like to move from a Crawl to a Walk, or from a Walk to a Run maturity.

These terms are general guidelines, and an organization’s goal should never be simply to achieve a “Run” maturity in every Capability.

As the FinOps Principles tell us, business value should drive our decision making. An organization that has established “Walk” stage anomaly detection – which has proven adequate in detecting the few cost spikes the organization has previously experienced – should consider investing time evolving other FinOps Capabilities which could provide an immediate benefit. Effort spent maturing a Capability that is meeting the measurement of success could move an organization’s maturity in that individual capability from Crawl to Walk, or Walk to Run – but provide no benefit to the measurement of success.

In other words, establishing a Walk stage in a particular Capability is not necessarily a good or bad thing, FinOps practitioners should focus less on maturing each Capability to “Run” for everything and more on achieving the outcomes the FinOps Capabilities aim to provide.

Prioritize maturing the Capabilities that provide your organization the highest business value.

Every Capability and functional activity can be at a different level of maturity. There is a FinOps Assessment and the below rubric to help indicate where we think we are operating allows a convenient shorthand to communicate effectively.

Crawl

Walk

Run