In the FinOps Framework, the major categories of work are defined as Capabilities. There are 22 potential capabilities, but not all organizations are tackling every capability. Included capabilities are things like "Budget and Forecasting", "Reporting & Analytics", "Invoicing & Chargeback", and "Unit Economics".
In the most recent State of FinOps 2025 survey, on average organizations are planning for an increase in effort in nearly 12 of those 22 capabilities, with the balance having no significant decrease in efforts.
Increased effort could mean starting activities in a new capability that had not previously been addressed (adding chargebacks for the first time), or it could mean increasing the amount of work needed in an area such as more detailed planning & forecasting, adding in new scopes of work for existing processes, adding additional reports to an existing dashboard, etc.
The FinOps Foundation focused on this in their conclusion as well,
"As practitioners take on the responsibility of additional spend areas they risk spreading themselves thin. They are being asked to achieve more by increasing productivity through operational efficiencies.
Practitioners are reporting that they need investments into upskilling, staff augmentation, tooling and automation. The most successful FinOps practices are balancing their efforts by continually aligning their activities to the business strategy and applying the most relevant FinOps Capabilities to each new scope of technology spend."
There are many ways we see organizations starting to deal with this feeling of being "stretched thin": Training, Automation, and Talent Acquisition.
Training
As the roles in organizations are merged and new players take on some FinOps roles and responsibilities, they must get appropriate training/skill building to work most effectively. This increased request for training is why our next online course and nearly half of our ITFMA presentations and workshops in May are focused on AI and FinOps. If you have questions or need training that you do not see listed yet, please contact us, and we can discuss your training needs.
Automation
Automation may mean moving from Excel to a system to compile and analyze billing data from multiple cloud providers, updating your cost model to show cloud costs in services, adding the ability to generate on-demand reports, or just automating data integration so that you are not moving and managing large files each month. Sometimes the needs and solution are explicit, and budgetary constraints are the only roadblock to putting them in place. Other times, the requirements seem conflicting or impossible, and the solution is uncertain. In those cases, our advisory services can help you to clarify priorities and needs, build business use cases, or give you confidence in your solution choices.
Talent Acquisition
FinOps roles are ones that organizations often want to staff with dedicated employees so that this critical knowledge stays internal, and we encourage organizations who can to staff up.
However, the market has limited resources and experience, slowing the time needed to ramp up programs. Our FinOps managed service is designed to help your program show value while you grow your staffing internally, eventually taking control.
What are your biggest challenges in keeping your program from being stretched too thin? Talent Acquisition, Automation, Training, or something else?
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