Mike Rosenberg
Senior Director Of Engineering at Nubank
When the concept of unit economics was introduced at Nubank along with the benefits of what a well defined set of unit metrics can enable, it generated a lot of interest as to the possibilities it could unlock. Here are some considerations and observations that we had along the way to help us support the implementation of FinOps-focused unit economics.
Background
Some engineering teams jump right into identifying unit metric demand drivers at a microservice level and use that information to make architectural, development, and IT operational decisions.
That approach is tantamount to trying to “boil the ocean”. The journey into identifying and developing good unit metrics needs to start by linking engineering decisions to business outcomes. At the end of the day, that is what matters.
Is our cost to serve our customers whether they are external or internal moving in the right direction?
Audience
The personas that were targets were Business unit leadership. Starting with business outcomes also allows FinOps practitioners to cast a wider net to include non-engineers into appreciating the benefits of unit economics vs. it being considered something that is only for the benefit of engineering.
Maturity Levels
The journey began a Pre-Crawl stage as the company was not using any unit economics. Nuband chose a third party product that specialized in unit economics, accelerating the company to a Walk stage. Over time we hope to expand to include usage getting to a Run stage.
Executive Sponsorship
We enjoyed support from top-level executives, including the VP of Engineering and CTO, ensuring the success of our FinOps unit economics initiative.
Data Sources
It was decided at Nubank to initiate our focus on developing demand drivers for customer facing products and services.
- What is the cost to process one thousand credit card transactions?
- What is the cost to serve a customer of one of our investment products?
After we have unit metrics for customer facing products and services, it then makes sense to establish them for our larger and more expensive to operate micro-services so the engineers can focus on producing better outcomes at that level.
Business Impact
Starting with business outcomes also allows FinOps practitioners to cast a wider net to include non-engineers into appreciating the benefits of unit economics vs. it being considered something that is only for the benefit of engineering.
You have an opportunity to create positive relationships with the business unit managers as well as your finance and accounting departments when you start by introducing a concept that offers them a variety of benefits.