5 Use Case Library
The following table contains a set of commonly performed FinOps scenarios that were used as a basis for developing this specification. These use cases were developed by FinOps practitioners.
| Persona | Capability | Use Case | FOCUS Columns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business / Product Owner | Budget Management | As a Business/Product Owner, I need to compare actual usage costs incurred within a time period to the amount forecasted. | BilledCost BillingAccountId BillingAccountName ChargePeriodStart ChargePeriodEnd ChargeCategory Provider |
| Engineering & Operations | Budget Management | As an Engineering Manager who wants to reduce their billed cost for Compute for a specific provider, I want to understand what is my current rate of Commitment based discount (without negotiated discounts) per type of commitment, so that I can strategize further purchases | BillingPeriodStart CommitmentDiscountType EffectiveCost ProviderName ServiceName SubAccountId SubAccountName |
| Engineering & Operations | Data Analysis and Showback | As an Engineer, I want to understand the costs of the components that belong to an application | ChargeDescription ChargePeriodStart EffectiveCost ResourceId ResourceName ResourceType ServiceCategory ServiceName SkuId Tags |
| Engineering & Operations | Data Analysis and Showback | As an Engineer, I want to understand the costs of the components for a specific resource | ChargePeriodStart EffectiveCost ResourceId ResourceName SkuId |
| Engineering & Operations | Data Analysis and Showback | As an Engineer, I want to understand the costs of all components and resources within a subaccount | ChargePeriodStart EffectiveCost ResourceId ResourceName SkuId SubAccountId |
| Engineering & Operations | Data Analysis and Showback | As an Engineering & Operations person I would like to analyze the usage of serverless requests on a weekly basis to identity potential optimization candidates | BilledCost ProviderName ChargePeriodStart ChargePeriodEnd SkuId ConsumedQuantity Tags ConsumedUnit |
| Engineering & Operations | Data Analysis and Showback | As an Engineer, I need to extract a ranked list of the top 10 service cost drivers within a sub account from a time period | ChargePeriodStart EffectiveCost SubAccountId SubAccountName ServiceName |
| Engineering & Operations | Workload Management & Automation | As an Engineer I need to ensure my costs within a region are distributed across the different availability zones in an expected manner. | ProviderName AvailabilityZone RegionId RegionName BillingPeriodStart EffectiveCost |
| Engineering & Operations | Workload Management & Automation | As an Engineering manager, I need to see the cost of each compute resource in a production SubAccount I'm responsible for. | ResourceId ResourceName ChargePeriodStart ChargePeriodEnd ServiceName ServiceCategory PricingQuantity EffectiveCost |
| Finance | Budget Management | As a person in Finance, I need to update cloud budget with actual cost details within a billing period | BilledCost BillingPeriodStart BillingPeriodEnd ProviderName |
| Finance | Budget Management | As a person in Finance, I need to update budget, by application, with actual cost details within a billed time period | BilledCost BillingPeriodStart BillingPeriodEnd ProviderName Tags |
| Finance | Budget Management | As a person in Finance, I need to track tax costs month over month. | BillingPeriodStart BilledCost ChargeCategory ProviderName |
| Finance | Budget Management | As a Financial Analyst or member of the company's treasury, I would like to understand what volume of commitment based charges are going to reoccur in the coming financial year | ChargeFrequency BillingPeriodStart BilledCost |
| Finance | Data Analysis and Showback | As a Finance person of a company that sells SaaS services, I need to determine the resource quantity and type used by a customer so that a monthly invoice can be issued to the customer. | ProviderName BillingPeriodStart SkuId PricingQuantity ConsumedQuantity ConsumedUnit Tags |
| Finance | Data Analysis and Showback | As a person in Finance, I need a report of all cost associated with a product from all geographic locations for a given month. | BilledCost BillingCurrency BillingAccountId BillingAccountName BillingPeriodEnd ProviderName Tags |
| Finance | FinOps & Intersecting Frameworks | As a person in Finance, I need a report of service-level cost within a specific Sub Account as a part of a private pricing negotiation. | BillingPeriodStart EffectiveCost ProviderName ServiceName SubAccountId SubAccountName |
| Finance | Forecasting | As a person in Finance, I need to forecast amortized costs on a month over month basis, based on historical trends | BillingPeriodStart ChargeCategory EffectiveCost PricingUnit ProviderName ServiceName ServiceCategory |
| Finance | Forecasting | As a person in Finance, I need to forecast cashflow on a month over month basis, based on historical trends | BillingPeriodStart ChargeCategory ChargeDescription BilledCost BillingCurrency ProviderName ServiceName ServiceCategory |
| FinOps Practitioner | Data Analysis and Showback | As a FinOps practitioner, I need to analyze service costs month over month, over a time period | EffectiveCost BillingPeriodStart ProviderName ServiceName |
| FinOps Practitioner | Data Analysis and Showback | As a FinOps practitioner, I need to analyze service costs, by region, over a time period | EffectiveCost BillingPeriodStart ProviderName RegionId RegionName ServiceName |
| FinOps Practitioner | Data Analysis and Showback | As a FinOps practitioner, I need to analyze Compute Engine service costs month over month for a period of time to identify accounts spending the most money on Compute Engine | BilledCost BillingPeriodStart ProviderName ResourceId ResourceName ServiceName SubAccountId SubAccountName |
| FinOps Practitioner | Data Analysis and Showback | As a FinOps practitioner, I want to monitor how much we are spending on a specific SaaS product purchased via the cloud service provider's marketplace. | ChargePeriodStart ChargePeriodEnd EffectiveCost InvoiceIssuer ProviderName Publisher |
| FinOps Practitioner | Data Analysis and Showback | As a FinOps Practitioner, I need to understand what we are spending across providers, billing periods, and service categories | ProviderName BillingPeriodStart BilledCost BillingCurrency ServiceCategory |
| FinOps Practitioner | FinOps & Intersecting Frameworks | As a FinOps Practitioner, I need to verify the accuracy of the cloud service provider invoices | ProviderName BillingAccountId BillingAccountName BillingPeriodStart BilledCost BillingCurrency |
| FinOps Practitioner | FinOps & Intersecting Frameworks | As a FinOps Practitioner, I need to verify the accuracy of the cloud service provider invoices and the underlying services | ProviderName BillingAccountId BillingAccountName BillingPeriodStart BilledCost BillingCurrency ServiceName |
| FinOps Practitioner | FinOps & Intersecting Frameworks | As a FinOps Practitioner, I need to reconcile discounts on the cloud service provider invoices and the underlying services | ProviderName BillingAccountId BillingAccountName BillingPeriodStart BilledCost BillingCurrency EffectiveCost ListCost ServiceName |
| FinOps Practitioner | FinOps & Intersecting Frameworks | As a FinOps Practitioner, I need to analyze usage data of resources | ChargePeriodStart ChargeCategory EffectiveCost ProviderName PricingQuantity ConsumedQuantity ResourceId ServiceName SkuId ConsumedUnit |
| FinOps Practitioner | Forecasting | As a FinOps Practitioner, I need to forecast costs, based on historical usage trends and rates | BillingPeriodStart ChargeCategory ChargeDescription EffectiveCost ProviderName PricingQuantity ConsumedQuantity RegionId ServiceCategory ServiceName SkuId ConsumedUnit |
| FinOps Practitioner | Managing Anomalies | As a FinOps Practitioner, I need to see the daily costs across all cloud providers, billing accounts, and sub accounts | BillingAccountId SubAccountId ChargePeriodStart ChargePeriodEnd ProviderName EffectiveCost |
| FinOps Practitioner | Managing Anomalies | As a FinOps Practitioner, I need to see the daily costs across all cloud providers, billing accounts, sub accounts, and region | BillingAccountId SubAccountId ChargePeriodStart ChargePeriodEnd EffectiveCost ProviderName RegionId RegionName |
| FinOps Practitioner | Managing Anomalies | As a FinOps practitioner, I need to see the daily costs across all cloud providers, billing accounts, sub accounts, and service | BillingAccountId SubAccountId ChargePeriodStart ChargePeriodEnd EffectiveCost ProviderName ServiceName |
| FinOps Practitioner | Managing Commitment Based Discounts | As a FinOps Practitioner, I want to track all commitment based discounts purchased for a time period | ProviderName BillingAccountId CommitmentDiscountId CommitmentDiscountType BilledCost ChargePeriodStart ChargeCategory |
| FinOps Practitioner | Managing Commitment Based Discounts | As a FinOps Practitioner, I want to track unused commitment charges in any given time period so that I consider them in my future commitment planning or remedy them | CommitmentDiscountStatus (filter) CommitmentDiscountId BilledCost ChargePeriodStart |
| FinOps Practitioner | Resource Utilization & Efficiency | As a FinOps Practitioner, I need to analyze the fleet diversity in order to run a campaign to standardize application architecture. | ChargeCategory ChargeDescription ChargePeriodStart ProviderName ResourceType SubAccountId ServiceName |
| FinOps Practitioner | Resource Utilization & Efficiency | As a FinOps Practitioner, I need to analyze the fleet diversity in order to run a campaign to standardize application architecture within a specific service | ChargeCategory ChargeDescription ChargePeriodStart ProviderName ResourceType SubAccountId ServiceName |
| FinOps Practitioner | Resource Utilization & Efficiency | As a FinOps Practitioner, I need to identify total refunds within a billing period. | ProviderName BillingAccountId ServiceCategory BilledCost BillingPeriodStart ChargeCategory ChargeClass |
| FinOps Practitioner | Resource Utilization & Efficiency | As a FinOps Practitioner, I need to identify refunds across sub accounts within a billing period. | ProviderName BillingAccountId ServiceCategory BilledCost BillingPeriodStart ChargeCategory ChargeClass SubAccountId |
| FinOps Practitioner | Workload Management & Automation | As a FinOps Practitioner, I need to do an analysis on compliance to data residency requirements across all regions | ChargePeriodStart ProviderName RegionId RegionName SubAccountId |
| Procurement | Data Analysis and Showback | As a person in Procurement, I need to understand what we are spending, across billing periods, across service categories to focus negotiations toward highest costing items | ProviderName BillingAccountId BillingAccountName BillingCurrency BilledCost BillingPeriodStart ServiceCategory ServiceName |
| Procurement, Finance, FinOps Practitioner | FinOps & Intersecting Frameworks | Multiple personas in an organization need to know the top SKU Codes based on spend, so that they can achieve multiple goals such as contract negotiation, SKU based forecasting, or high unit cost cleanup activities. | ChargePeriodStart ChargePeriodEnd ListCost PricingUnit ListUnitPrice PricingQuantity SkuId SkuPriceId ProviderName |