Cloud FinOps, 2nd Edition

Chapter 24. Partnering with Engineers to Enable FinOps

FinOps is a team sport, and very little gets done without the engineers. In this chapter, we’re going to talk about how to instill a culture of FinOps by building up engineering motivation to be cost-efficient rather than dictating a mandate. Mandates only provide short-term action while they are top of mind for leadership. Ultimately, the pressure from mandates lessens and things go back to business as normal, with cost inefficiency creeping back in.

In this chapter, we’ll look at why a software engineer’s day-to-day life makes considering cost optimization difficult and we’ll cover the transitions that engineers tend to make as they begin to integrate cost considerations into their daily workflows.

Many engineers have come from a world where cost considerations weren’t historically part of their job. Now, in the cloud, they are being asked to consider cost as a new constraint. Conveying the context of why the cost of variable infrastructure is now an important piece of their job and its impact on the business is key; otherwise, it may get deprioritized.

In a mature practice, engineers and developers are at the pointy end of the FinOps spear and their early involvement, alignment, and buy-in are crucial to success.

Integrating Us with Them

When revisiting the first edition of this book, we noticed how much it used an us versus them tone when it came to FinOps teams and engineering teams. Some of the phrasing implied that ...