~300 years earlier in our jargon filled
shift-left world, Thomas Fuller and Benjamin Franklin offered the proverbial phrases about one timely stitch and one ounce of prevention. Indeed, we know we must approach challenges with financial operational excellence perspective to avoid more expensive stitches and to avoid an expensive pound of cure.
~42 years ago, Talking Heads released their album Remain in Light which was produced by Brian Eno. One track,
“Once in a Lifetime”, gained notoriety due in large part to
a new and innovative approach that creatively combined video and music to create a brand new genre (now commonly known as a music video) that aired on the newly formed cable entertainment channel Music Television (MTV).
~30 years ago, Ward Cunningham coined the term
“Technical Debt”. In effect, Cunningham captured the essence of deleterious deferral of diligence, decisions, and debugging by developers in dollars.
~10 years ago, the focus on value management in IT by companies was often referred to as Technology Business Management aka
TBM. Today, combined with modern cloud economics, the discipline of TBM has a wider audience of increasingly DevOps and DevSecOps culture oriented communities embracing
FinOps.
To understand
FinOps, let’s explore how the lyrics and music video innovation of Talking Heads can unify what Cunningham saw in
micro with what Franklin and Fuller saw in
macro. So, we begin by looking lyrically at
FinOps in general.
🎶 Once in a pipeline, revenue flowing underground 🎶
