Balancing cost control with innovation velocity requires discipline and the right financial operations (FinOps) practices.

Budgets vs Error Budgets

Just like reliability uses error budgets, innovation should have cost budgets. Allow teams to experiment within bounds, then require business justification for overages.

Unit Economics

Track cost per unit of value: cost per customer, per transaction, per API call. Optimize unit economics rather than just total cloud spend.

Rightsizing

Continuously analyze resource utilization and resize appropriately. Use automation to scale down during off-hours and rightsize over time.

Parking

Tag resources so you can identify ownerless or abandoned infrastructure. Implement policies to automatically delete or archive resources after inactivity periods.