Best Practice: The 3-Stage DataFinOps Lifecycle

A proven DataFinOps approach takes a holistic view of cost governance through the lens of an iterative three-stage (or phase) lifecycle. Frequently an organization is in more than one stage simultaneously—with different departments, teams, and individual users at different levels of maturity.

Inform > Optimize > Operate
  • Inform: Understanding and getting visibility into what’s going on, how much it’s costing, measuring and quantifying everything, tracking costs, and identifying exactly where the money is going.
  • Optimize: Identifying where you can eliminate waste and inefficiencies, take advantage of less-expensive cloud pricing options, or otherwise run cloud data operations more cost-effectively.
  • Operate: Going from reactive problem-solving to proactive problem-preventing, empowering individuals to self-service for cost optimization themselves, implementing automated guardrails, sustaining iterative improvements.

Inform

Visualize
Track
Alocate

Optimize

Reduce
Improve
Empower

Operate

Manage
Prevent