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FinOps Personas

Framework Overview / FinOps Personas

Implementing FinOps requires many stakeholders, or Personas, in an organization to work collaboratively with the FinOps team. It is not only the FinOps team who perform FinOps activities. All FinOps Personas involved in using, tracking, managing, or directing the use of cloud will benefit from working together using the FinOps Framework as an operating model.

Personas represent broad stakeholder groups that must collaborate, not individual people. In a complex organization, a Persona may represent many people in various related roles, and in very small organizations, a single person may perform the duties of multiple Personas. Each has an important part to play in supporting FinOps.

Core Personas

Within most organizations, there are Core Personas who will always be involved in the practice of FinOps. These Core Personas provide all of the organizational disciplines to successfully use cloud effectively. Each Persona has a role to play in the organization as well as in the practice of FinOps, and each has perspectives, challenges, metrics and outcomes they seek that may be slightly different from other Personas.

FinOps Practitioner

Bridge business, engineering, and finance teams by applying a working knowledge of the FinOps Framework in order to establish a FinOps culture and enable evidence-based decisions to maximize the business value of cloud.

FinOps Responsibilities include:

Technical Proficiency
Analytical Skills
Cost Management and Optimization
Collaboration and Communication
FinOps Practice Continuous Improvement
Problem-Solving
Change Management
FinOps Persona Collaboration

Leadership

Empowers organizational alignment to prioritize FinOps initiatives, enables action to overcome FinOps challenges, and connects cloud technology decisions with business objectives.

FinOps Responsibilities include:

Strategic Planning Oversight
Decision-Making and Prioritization Authority
Stakeholder Engagement and Alignment
Revenue Growth
Compliance and Governance

Product

Drive business value by defining requirements and prioritizing initiatives that align FinOps to business objectives, engaging stakeholders, and articulating the value-proposition of cloud technology decisions.

FinOps Responsibilities include:

Strategic Alignment
Stakeholder Engagement
Requirement Definition
Value Delivery
Change Management

Engineering

Responsible for designing, managing and optimizing cloud infrastructure to achieve cost-effectiveness, performance, reliability while ensuring the security and compliance of cloud environments.

FinOps Responsibilities include:

Cloud Infrastructure Management
Application and Services Deployment
Cost Management and Resource Optimization
Monitoring and Alerting
Security and Compliance
Automation and Tooling
Architecting Sustainably for Cloud

Finance

Provides financial expertise and works closely with FinOps Practitioners to reconcile cloud provider invoices with cloud billing data to accurately forecast, budget and chargeback cloud costs.

FinOps Responsibilities include:

Financial Expertise
Budgeting and Forecasting
Cost Allocation Analysis
Financial Reporting
Compliance and Governance

Procurement

Responsible for procuring cloud services, optimizing vendor relationships, and ensuring cost-effective and compliant vendor engagements, collaborating with FinOps Practitioners to ensure rates contribute to the successful management of cloud finances.

FinOps Responsibilities include:

Vendor Risk Management
Vendor Contract Management and Negotiation
Negotiated Discount Management and Negotiation
Collaboration with IT and Operations
License Monitoring and Evaluation
Compliance and Governance

Allied Personas

Organizations may have roles that are not directly involved in the practice of FinOps. These Allied Personas work within traditional or emerging disciplines – including Sustainability, ITAM, ITFM/TBM, Security, and ITSM/ITIL – and may need to coordinate with FinOps Practitioners. Their roles align with the "Intersecting Disciplines" Framework Capability which outlines where their activities intersect with FinOps.

ITSM / ITIL

IT Service Management is responsible for collaborating with FinOps Practitioners to standardize and streamline IT service operations, improve service quality and reliability, and ensure that IT services meet agreed-upon service levels and performance targets are balanced against cloud cost management priorities.

Responsibilities intersecting with FinOps include:

Service Design
Service Operation & Improvement
Service Level Monitoring & Management
Change Management
Cost Analysis and Optimization
Documentation and Reporting
Stakeholder Collaboration

ITAM

IT Asset Management collaborates with FinOps Practitioners to achieve efficiency, transparency, and value in managing IT assets that impact cloud use, by leveraging the expertise and data from both disciplines to optimize costs, ensure compliance, and support strategic business objectives balanced against cloud cost management priorities.

Responsibilities intersecting with FinOps include:

Asset Discovery and Inventory
Asset Auditing and Compliance
License Management
Cost Analysis and Optimization
Documentation and Reporting
Stakeholder Collaboration

Sustainability

Sustainability collaborates with FinOps Practitioners to ensure cloud use optimizes for environmental impact, drive accountability, and accelerate progress towards broader sustainability goals in a way that is balanced against cloud cost management priorities.

Responsibilities intersecting with FinOps include:

Optimization for Sustainable Initiatives
Waste Reduction
Policy and Compliance
Efficiency and Optimization Analysis
Documentation and Reporting
Stakeholder Collaboration

Security

IT Security collaborates with FinOps Practitioners to leverage their FinOps expertise and insights to optimize cloud security spending, improve IT Security financial governance, and strengthen the organization's overall cloud security posture.

Responsibilities intersecting with FinOps include:

Monitoring and Anomaly Response
Anomaly Investigation and Analysis
Policy and Compliance
Identity and Access Management
Documentation and Reporting
Stakeholder Collaboration

ITFM / TBM

IT Financial Management is responsible for collaborating with FinOps Practitioners to provide transparency into IT spending, enable informed decision-making, ensuring cloud and traditional IT investments are aligned with business priorities, cost-effective, and deliver measurable value to the organization.

Responsibilities intersecting with FinOps include:

Budgeting
Cost Accounting & Optimization
Financial Analysis
Investment Prioritization
Financial Reporting
Continuous Process Improvements
Documentation and Reporting
Stakeholder Collaboration