Impactful FinOps Reporting
In which I discuss returning to the office, my lessons in making impactful reports, and then I shoehorn a karaoke analogy at the end to segue into my song picks.
I recently returned to the office, working in a hybrid mode - part-time at home and part-time in the office. Returning to my desk, I was happily reunited with some pens and post-it notes that I left behind on my desk. The experience of returning to the office has been an adjustment. There are some things I like about it and other things I do not wish to reintroduce to my life.
One thing that I have enjoyed returning to is my whiteboard. It is a moment frozen in time, with printouts of all the OKRs and tracked metrics from back in Q1 of 2020. Also, on the lower right-hand corner of the board there is a printout of this image:
I don’t remember where I found this, but the source can be found here. OKRs and metrics rotated out, but this image has been on the board since 2019. To be honest, I liked this image, but it wasn't something I referenced frequently or perhaps ever. I liked the hand-drawn style and collected it. It took two years but finally, its message hit home for me during a conversation about FinOps reporting.
We recently created a new view for our top-down reporting and started receiving feedback that this new report is resonating with our stakeholders, more so than other reports we have generated over the years. I believe it's because we followed the format shown in that image. For example:
Data: the billing files from cloud providers
Information: the billing files with resource tags/identification
Knowledge: the business organizational hierarchy (application, teams, departments, offices, business)
Insight: leveraging that knowledge to represent billing data by the organizational hierarchy
Wisdom: the investigation of potential optimization opportunities found in this reporting and the identification of patterns found in the organizational hierarchy
Impact: the repeated execution of reporting and action taken on optimization opportunities
Years ago, when I started with FinOps, my reports only contained Data, Information, and Impact. Basically, the reports were just lists of resources, their tags, and the associated spend. I’d identify the apparent optimization opportunities. The impact could be measured, but before I could celebrate reducing cloud spend, more resources spun up and covered up the savings. I’d avoid cloud cost, but the impact was limited and was hard to sustain as our cloud environment grew.
This next bit is important and is basically the moral of today’s story: Using the original reporting mentioned above, it was incredibly hard to spread a FinOps culture. All the other steps in that hand-drawn chart (knowledge, insight & wisdom) were hidden in the process. Sure, I was looking at billing data every day. I could make logical leaps and match patterns in my head, but the teams that needed to act on those optimization opportunities had different day jobs and couldn’t make the same connections I did. How were they supposed to identify, understand and prioritize opportunities without someone like me, sitting next to them to point them out and explain the reports to them? In other words - FinOps culture spread slowly if at all.
Adding in the company’s organizational hierarchy to billing data was a game-changer. Rather than show department leaders random cloud resources with their cost centers tagged on them, we could summarize their spend and related optimization opportunities in a way that was immediately meaningful for them. Taking the data and organizing it to match how our stakeholders were organized led to insights.
As we worked with them to investigate those opportunities, wisdom was gained. Not only did we achieve cost savings, but we started to build culture. Connections, logic, and patterns were no longer hidden in the backend. Our stakeholders found the reporting we did useful and built it into their operations. This led to sustained impact.
If you want everyone to sing along together, you’ve got to make sure they have the lyrics. You want it so anyone can pick it up and join you seamlessly, regardless of their previous experience. Impactful reporting transforms the FinOps function from a small group of people who scan billing data every day to an organization-wide effort to manage cloud and product spend. Anyone can walk up to it. Your goal is to turn your reporting into a FinOps Karaoke stage for your enterprise.
Karaoke Playlist
Speaking of karaoke . . .
Good karaoke isn’t about singing ability, in fact, it’s slightly disappointing if the singer has any talent. Good karaoke is more about presence. Stage presence transforms a singer from a scrawny armed, beer-bellied nerd into a Rock God.
There may or may not be grainy videos floating along the Internet aether of me owning the stage at Ellis Island in Las Vegas or in a neighbors driveway with a bonfire roaring nearby. If you have one of those videos, consider deleting them. Preserving the mystery of karaoke is so much better than the cold certainty of it. Also, blackmail is a crime, so don’t try using those videos against me . . . as if you could . . . my karaoke is untouchable.
My Karaoke List
Sweet Caroline - Niel Diamond (The song has become a cliche, but it's a cliche because no one can resist the ‘Duh Duh Duuuuuuuuuh’ sing along.)
Suspicious Minds - Elvis (Protip: this song has a fake fade out at the end that you can milk if you remember it's coming - as the music fades. pretend to walk off stage then as the volume turns back up, come running back to finish the song out.)
Locked Out of Heaven - Bruno Mars (A few too many high notes in this one for my voice, but again - it’s about stage presence.)
Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel (There is a great musical interlude in the middle that can be filled with a chicken dance. Trust me on this.)
Tequila - I have yet to do this, but someday friends . . . someday . . .
Are you not entertained? Did you get some nugget out my story and music selections? To make sure you get notified when I post a new entry, be sure to subscribe. I’m aiming for a perfectly reasonable once to twice a month schedule.