Getting into FinOps
Ever wondered how to get into FinOps? Many people have asked me this and I have provided the below guidance to others. If there is something missing please let me know so we can help each other.
General Tips
- Explore the data
- Be curious
- Look for trends in the data, including anomalies and changes in data due to time (workday, seasonal, hourly)
- Try and answer questions like
What is costing us the most and why?,What systems or applications cost us the most and why?,When are our busiest periods?, andIs our costs going up and down based on usage or is it flat? - Look for existing tags or other metadata to help aggregate resources, accounts, projects, etc. by application, system, team, business unit, etc.
Communities
Join the FinOps Foundation Community and slack channel.
Join local FinOps events, virtual or in-person. This will get you on future event lists for your region.
Join a Working Group - join your local community call events and/or contact Rob Martin on slack.
Join an open source project like FOCUS.
FinOps Training
- The Cloud FinOps book is great read
- FinOps Certified Practitioner is a great place to start.
- FinOps Certified Professional is next level and will challenge you.
- Explore other FinOps.org training options
- Introduction to FOCUS
- FinOps Weekly offers courses on specific subjects like budgeting & forecasting, Azure optimization, and others.
- FinOps Essentials for Cloud Deployments on Linkedin Learning
- Cloud Computing - Understanding Core Concepts on LinkedIn Learning
Cloud Training
Conferences
Attend FinOpsX (I cannot recommend this conference enough) and FinOpsX Days
Other conferences can be found in my Helpful Stuff resource page.
Content on the Internet
Check out the many newsletters, blogs, podcasts, conferences, etc. in my Helpful Stuff resource page.
Other Suggestions
Search for FinOps on linkedin and follow different newsletters, posters, etc.
Local meetups - start one! Then advertise within FinOps and FinOps Weekly communities.