Incorporating FinOps practices into your business is a collaborative effort, meaning leaders and people from every department will be involved and united under one main goal. If you want to have a successful FinOps implementation, you need to consider it less as a product and more as an ongoing service that requires everyone to understand the goals and desired outcomes. So, as you start your FinOps practices, create a team that will deliver success.
Executive Leaders
Firstly, you must include leaders on your FinOps team. Depending on what your business focuses on, this might be your CTO, CIO, CFO or a combination. The involvement of leadership within the team can help prioritize FinOps initiatives, map out objectives, overcome FinOps challenges, and connect FinOps decisions with business goals. Their responsibilities range from strategic planning oversight to revenue growth and compliance to stakeholder alignment.
Your Engineering Department
It is critical to have someone from the engineering team involved with the activities of FinOps to ensure that developers and architects have an understanding of the goals in place. Engineers will have a significant impact on the success of cloud computing and FinOps. To avoid overspending, compliance issues, poor cost/performance metrics, the engineering team should have an integral role.
Your Finance Department
Similarly to engineering, you should have someone from your finance department on board your FinOps team. This is especially important to ensure that the company’s overall goals are aligned with the budget that’s been set in place. They will watch over forecasting, budgeting, and chargebacks throughout the company. Incorporating your finance department into the FinOps team is an essential aspect of creating an efficient, well-running, cost-effective cloud computing strategy.
Procurement
Procurement is an essential aspect of a FinOps team, as they are the ones who will choose cloud services, optimize vendor relationships, and follow compliance regulations. They will work closely with finance and engineering to ensure that what is chosen is aligned with the business’s needs and budgets, all while choosing the right services and resources. Much of their responsibility also lands on risk management regarding vendors, resources, services, and products.
FinOps Practitioner
A FinOps practitioner is the glue that brings together the needs and goals of the engineering and finance teams. They come with all the experience needed for FinOps, how to establish a FinOps culture, and how to maximize the use of FinOps while being cost-effective. They are there for everything from technical support to problem-solving and collaboration to communication. A FinOps team can not be complete without a FinOps practitioner.
Structuring a FinOps team can be a cumbersome process. If you have questions or want assistance through the process, contact the team at FinOps Oversight.