Implementing the FinOps Framework requires you to work together with the FinOps Personas in your organization. And all the personas involved in FinOps will benefit from understanding the Framework’s operating model. Operating within the FinOps Framework requires finding allies in times of change, defining a common language, building enablement strategies to elevate, and developing communication programs. The practice of Finops is more than a technology solution or a checklist you hand to your teams.
FinOps practitioners bridge business, IT and Finance teams by enabling evidence-based decisions in near-real time to help optimize cloud use and increase business value. They focus on establishing a FinOps culture and enabling stakeholder teams by demonstrating a working knowledge of the Principles and Capabilities of the FinOps Framework, a prescriptive model of actions and best practices.
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These participants are usually Business and Product Owner team members, such as a Director of Cloud Optimization, Cloud Analyst, or Business Operations Manager.
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Engineers and Ops team members, such as Lead Software Engineers, Principal Systems Engineers, Cloud Architects, Service Delivery Managers, Engineering Managers, or Directors of Platform Engineering, focus on building and supporting services for the organization. Cost is introduced as a metric in the same way that other performance metrics are tracked and monitored. Members of these teams consider the efficient design and use of resources via activities like rightsizing (the process of resizing cloud resources to better match the workload requirements), allocating container costs, finding unused storage and compute, and identifying whether spending anomalies are expected.
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Finance members, including Financial Planners, Financial Analysts, Financial Business Managers/Advisors, use the reporting provided by the FinOps team for cost allocation, showback allocation, and forecasting. They work closely with FinOps practitioners to understand historic billing data so that they can collaborate and build accurate forecasting models used for planning and budgeting.
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Procurement Analysts, Sourcing analysts, Vendor Management or Directors within Procurement teams use insights provided by the FinOps team for identifying sourcing and purchasing of product and services within a Cloud Platform Vendor. Procurement should work closely with FinOps to ensure that prices and terms negotiated in the contract are fulfilled and streamline the procurement process. Procurement may have a legal component to review contract language.
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ITAM team members such as IT Asset Manager, Software Asset Manager, IT Asset Analyst, IT Asset Administrator, IT Asset Specialist, IT Asset Compliance Manager, and IT Asset Procurement Specialist focus on maximizing the business value of all assets in the organization. It is also their responsibility to manage risk related to asset optimization and contract compliance. They work closely with other IT professionals, including Architecture, Engineering and Security and stakeholders to develop and implement effective IT asset management strategies that align with the organization's goals and objectives.
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The Sustainability Practitioner within Enterprise IT works to integrate green initiatives and principles within the organization's IT operations. They drive strategies for energy-efficient and resource usage efficient practices, reduce emissions from IT infrastructure, and foster a culture of sustainable decision-making across procurement and operations. Balancing the demand for IT services and environmental goals, they leverage their expertise to reduce costs, manage risk, and introduce predictability in resource usage.
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When proposing the adoption of a FinOps function within an organization, there will be a need to brief a variety of personas among the executive team to gain approval, buy-in, and involvement in conducting FinOps and achieving its goals.
Each Executive team persona is described below, in terms of their goals, concerns, key messaging and useful KPIs. By understanding the motivations of each executive persona, a FinOps champion will be able to describe the value of FinOps more effectively, minimizing the time and effort to gain alignment. Please see the main Adopting FinOps section for more context.
Primary Goal: Drive best practices into the organization through education, standardization, and cultural growth and support.
Primary Goal: Assurance that cloud investments are aligned with business objectives.
Primary Goal: Leverage technology to give the business a market and competitive advantage.
Primary Goal: Manage the cost of cloud utilization (among other costs across the org) and ensuring that money is wisely spent.
Primary Goal: Quickly bring new products and features to market with an accurate price point.
Primary Goal: Deliver faster and high quality services to the organisation, whilst maintaining business as usual.
Primary Goal: Cloud platform relationship management.
Primary Goal: Ensure that all IT assets are being used to their fullest potential and that the organization is getting the best value for its investments in IT. Also ensuring that the organization is fully compliant with all licensing and regulatory requirements.
Primary Goal: To integrate sustainability principles into enterprise IT operations, reducing environmental impact, and driving cost and carbon efficiencies.
The above diagram demonstrates how, for organizations operating on the FinOps model, a cross-functional team known as a Cloud Cost Center of Excellence (CCoE) interacts with the rest of the business to manage the cloud strategy, governance, and best practices that the rest of the organization can leverage to transform the business using the cloud.
