From visibility to value

Adoption sat below 10%, and the product risked becoming shelfware inside enterprise contracts. The data showed why: cloud providers already gave customers the same visibility.

But the gap was also an opportunity. Customers’ spend was visible but unmanaged, 35% of workloads were oversized, and nobody was clearly accountable for budgets across teams. The market signal was a misfit, not irrelevance.

The pivot: from cost visibility to cost accountability

• Assign cloud spend, alert on thresholds, report on spend.
• Identify waste, highlight inefficiencies, show who causes it.
• Automate tasks, recommend workflows, attribute ownership.

I stepped in at four levels: direction, orchestrating the shift from a visibility tool to a FinOps product; alignment on goals, personas and the MVP definition; process, setting priorities and roadmap sequencing and running three rounds of design feedback; and system, driving platform alignment on the critical shared components.

I empowered the two designers to lead the designs, with weekly check-ins, and stepped in where the strategy and the platform needed me.

The ideal design used a budget gauge the platform didn’t have yet. Rather than block the release, we shipped a simpler version.

Then I turned the gap into a platform win. I found designers in other business units who needed a gauge, built a case with customer validation and competitor data, and got the platform team to prioritize the component. Two releases later, the gauge shipped in Cloud Cost Management.

What I learned

• Every problem hides an opportunity.
• Define the MVP scope early.
• Validate fast with low fidelity.
• Expect change, and collaborate across teams early.

A product that was a candidate for sunset became a value-add product, with persona-based modules and better cloud utilization for customers.