The FinOps Maturity Roadmap: Crawl to Run in 90 Days

Most companies are at "Crawl" stage (reactive) for cloud costs. Here is how to reach "Run" (proactive) in 90 days:

## Stage 1: Crawl (Weeks 1-4)
**State**: No visibility, cost surprises, finger-pointing
**Actions**:
- Implement basic tagging (cost center, environment, owner)
- Generate first cost allocation report
- Identify top 10 cost drivers
- Find obvious waste (terminated instances, unused volumes)
**Outcome**: 10-15% quick wins, baseline established

## Stage 2: Walk (Weeks 5-8)
**State**: Some visibility, reactive optimization
**Actions**:
- Weekly cost reviews with engineering leads
- Rightsize top 20 over-provisioned resources
- Implement savings plans for steady-state workloads
- Auto-shutdown dev/test environments
**Outcome**: Additional 15-20% savings, team awareness growing

## Stage 3: Run (Weeks 9-12)
**State**: Proactive optimization, cost-aware culture
**Actions**:
- Real-time FinOps dashboard for all teams
- Automated anomaly detection and alerts
- Monthly optimization sprints
- Cost-per-customer or cost-per-transaction metrics
**Outcome**: Sustained 30-40% total reduction, continuous improvement

## Success Metrics

- Cloud unit economics improving monthly
- Teams proactively optimizing before being asked
- No cost surprises or budget overruns
- Engineering considers cost in architecture decisions