In a recent episode of the FinOps Weekly Podcast, Larry Advey, an experienced FinOps practitioner and maintainer of the FOCUS specification, shared game-changing insights on collaboration that challenge conventional wisdom about working with different personas in organizations.
Whether you’re struggling to get engineering teams on board with cost optimization or wrestling with multi-cloud cost visibility, this deep dive into FinOps collaboration strategies offers practical solutions you can implement immediately.
The Critical Role of Collaboration in FinOps
“Collaboration is of utmost importance and a key element as part of being a successful FinOps practitioner,” Advey explains. The reality is that FinOps professionals work with an incredibly diverse ecosystem of stakeholders, even in small companies. You’re constantly engaging with engineering, product, finance, procurement, and leadership teams—each with vastly different priorities and communication styles.
The challenge isn’t just technical; it’s deeply human. Engineers focus on shipping code, developing features, and fixing bugs. Finance teams concentrate on cutting costs, improving profitability, and managing budgets. These priorities often seem at odds, making effective communication crucial for FinOps success.
Understanding this dynamic is the first step toward building the collaborative relationships that make FinOps initiatives successful rather than just another corporate mandate that gets ignored.
Mastering FinOps Personas: Who to Approach and How
Engineering Teams: From Adversary to Ally
Here’s where Advey’s approach becomes truly counterintuitive. While most FinOps practitioners report that engineering teams are their biggest challenge, Advey finds them the easiest to work with. His secret? A fundamental shift in approach from telling to asking.
“If you propose it to them and ask them, or here’s the data, what do you think about this? Do you notice anything with this? Rather than telling them, ‘Hey, you’ve got a problem here, go fix this,’ instead ask them, ‘Do you see anything that could… can you explain this to me?'”
This approach works because it taps into what engineers naturally love: explaining their systems and showing off the cool stuff they’ve built. Instead of making them defensive, you’re making them the expert in the conversation.
The key principles for engineering collaboration include:
- Lead with curiosity, not criticism: Ask questions about their architecture and systems rather than pointing out problems
- Make their lives easier: Provide specific tools, scripts, and clear guidance rather than vague mandates
- Connect cost optimization to performance: Engineers care about efficiency and performance, which naturally aligns with cost optimization
- Provide context and data: Show them the numbers and let them draw conclusions
As Victor Garcia, one of the podcast hosts, emphasized from his engineering background: “If you teach an engineer or show him or her how to do stuff, they will do it. And if it’s innovative… they will discover and know the tool and how to actually do it.”
The Finance Team Dynamic
While engineering teams respond well to technical curiosity and data-driven conversations, finance teams require a different approach. They’re typically more comfortable with traditional business metrics and may need help understanding the technical nuances of cloud cost structures.
The key is building relationships at both the individual contributor level and the leadership level, creating what Advey calls “top-down approaches” where executives can drive initiatives while you maintain the technical relationships that make implementation successful.
Multi-Cloud FinOps: Challenges and Solutions
Managing costs across multiple cloud providers introduces layers of complexity that can overwhelm even experienced FinOps practitioners. Advey’s approach starts with fundamentals but scales to sophisticated solutions.
Essential Multi-Cloud Strategies:
- Master the basics of each cloud platform: Get cloud practitioner certifications for AWS, Azure fundamentals, and GCP basics to understand the terminology differences
- Establish single pane of glass visibility: “Having one tool to look at all that from top down is of extreme importance,” Advey notes
- Set up comprehensive monitoring: Implement anomaly detection, budget alerts, and reporting across all platforms
- Understand the business context: Learn why different clouds were chosen and how engineering capabilities differ between them
The reality is that multi-cloud environments are rarely balanced. One cloud typically dominates spending, but having unified visibility prevents blind spots that can lead to surprise costs or missed optimization opportunities.
Technical Skills for Multi-Cloud Success
Success in multi-cloud FinOps requires both breadth and depth. You need enough technical knowledge to communicate effectively with engineering teams while maintaining the business acumen to drive organizational change. As Damian Munafo, another podcast host, observed: “The more technical that you are, it’s easier.”
FOCUS Specification: The Future of FinOps Standardization
One of the most significant developments in FinOps is the FOCUS (FinOps Open Cost and Transparency Specification), and Advey offers unique insights as one of its maintainers. FOCUS addresses a fundamental challenge in multi-cloud cost management: the lack of standardized terminology and data formats across cloud providers.
“When you go between the different clouds, things are different terms for roughly the same thing. FOCUS is one dictionary by which to call that thing,” Advey explains.
FOCUS Adoption and Future Developments:
- Version 1.2 expansion: The latest release extends beyond cloud service providers to support thousands of SaaS companies and technology vendors
- Standardized terminology: Creates consistent language for cost data across all platforms
- Ecosystem growth: Enables development of tools, dashboards, and solutions that work across all cost data sources
- Hybrid cloud support: Future developments will better support data center and private cloud cost allocation
The specification is already enabling innovative solutions, from AWS QuickSight dashboards to Azure’s FinOps Hub, with more vendor adoption expected as the standard matures.
Actionable FinOps Collaboration Strategies
Based on the podcast discussion, here are the most impactful strategies you can implement immediately:
For New FinOps Practitioners:
- Invest in foundational training: Master FinOps fundamentals through books, certifications, and hands-on experience
- Start with experiments: Find where value lies in your organization through small pilots and iterations
- Build technical credibility: Learn enough about your cloud platforms to speak intelligently with engineering teams
- Focus on relationships first: Establish trust before trying to drive change
For Engaging Engineering Teams:
- Ask diagnostic questions: “Can you explain this pattern to me?” instead of “Fix this cost spike”
- Provide ready-to-use solutions: Scripts, policies, and tools that make optimization easy
- Connect to innovation: Frame cost optimization as technical challenges and performance improvements
- Show, don’t tell: Demonstrate tools and approaches rather than just describing them
For Multi-Cloud Management:
- Establish unified reporting: Implement tools that aggregate costs across all platforms
- Standardize on FOCUS: Begin adopting FOCUS-compliant reporting where possible
- Build cloud-specific expertise: Develop knowledge in each platform’s unique cost structures
- Plan for hybrid scenarios: Prepare for data center and private cloud integration needs
Conclusion
Successful FinOps isn’t just about implementing the right tools or finding the biggest cost optimizations—it’s about building the collaborative relationships that make sustainable change possible. Larry Advey’s insights challenge us to move beyond traditional approaches and embrace strategies that work with human nature rather than against it.
The key takeaway is simple but powerful: lead with curiosity, make people’s jobs easier, and build genuine relationships across the organization. Whether you’re working with resistant engineering teams or wrestling with multi-cloud complexity, these principles provide a foundation for success.
As the FinOps field continues to evolve with standards like FOCUS and expanding multi-cloud adoption, the practitioners who master collaboration will be the ones who drive real organizational change. Start with these strategies, experiment with what works in your environment, and remember that every great FinOps program is built on great relationships.
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