FinOps in Action

FIA - Tammy Burnitt
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Tammy Burnitt: [00:00:00] it's a journey, not a race. So you just have to be patient and take a deep breath you are selling something, it's finops, right?

And you have to, you're trying to get somebody on board with it. So hopefully you have some good soft skills and you got some tricks up your sleeve.

Speaker 2: Welcome to finops in Action. I'm your host, Alon Arvas. Each week I'll sit down with finops experts to explore the toughest challenges between finops and engineering. This show is brought to you by 0.5, empowering teams to optimize cloud costs with tip detection and remediation tools that drive action.

Alon Arvatz: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of finops in Action Today. I'm so excited to have our guest. I've been chasing her for a while, and finally she was open to join the podcast and be there and share her insights. She actually has over 25 years of experience in it and capacity management. She was the founder of the finops program and community at Shell, and she has [00:01:00] finops on her Texas license plate.

I'm happy to welcome Director of finops at UiPath, Tammy Burnitt. Tammy, how are you today?

Tammy Burnitt: I'm great, Ilan. It's good to be here.

Alon Arvatz: Good to have you, Tammy. You have so much experience in finops. Please share with us what is the one thing you got wrong when you started your finops career?

Tammy Burnitt: Oh my goodness. I have to think way back. Right? Um, it's been quite a few years ago, but I think maybe that's, maybe that's kind of a two-pronged answer. Um, one, I think I was a little disenchanted by. I thought this synopsis is great thing and it's a great framework and it, you know, it saves money and it helps people understand their spend. And I think I was met probably with more resistance than I would've anticipated originally when I set out to I would call evangelize, um, my stakeholder community. And I think in, in tandem with that. Was probably not starting A-C-C-O-E in terms of [00:02:00] finops and what do people do? What is the charter?

What are the inputs and outputs? Because if you know kind of what everybody's roles and responsibilities are and everybody's kind of rowing and pushing and pulling in the same direction, it's probably a lot easier to sell finops because people. Have a better understanding of what their persona is and what is being expected of them. Any tools that we would have available to them. You know, what does the data look like? And so if I think back, you know, many, many years ago when I started this journey, and also lot's changed since then, you know, the framework's changed. But I think for me, in my personal journey, um. Being so passionate and motivated about finops, I might be put the cart before the horse a little bit instead of like, you know, kind of drawing out, I think, you know, governance and policy charter, a little bit of structure to be able to get people to go, oh, okay, I see what she's trying to do here. I think that would've helped probably a lot more.

Alon Arvatz: Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's actually so funny that you're sharing that to you. Some more resistance than you're expected. You [00:03:00] know, when I tell people about, Hey, finops and we help save money, they're like, oh, it's, it's a no brainer. Like everyone should, should be on top of it. And I'm curious, like what are your insights about this resistance?

Like why do people in the organization are not so excited to do fins just as much as we do?

Tammy Burnitt: You know, that's, that's an interesting question. And I talk to my peers a lot in the finops community, and I think part of it is maybe not understanding, or a lot of people think it's just about saving money, right? And I think if you look at finops, there's very much a technical aspect, and then there's the finance aspect, right? And typically the POAs is that you're talking to, they'll either fall on one side of the fence, right? So if they're technical, they may not fully understand the finance side of finops, like. I can't predict my spend. Well, you probably need budgets and forecasts to do that, or anomaly detection or then if you talk to somebody on the finance side, I can't keep track of what's happening over here, or projects or migrations or, you know, the, [00:04:00] the finance side might be frustrated because the numbers are all over the place and I can't.

You know, I can't predict, and you know, all this spend is coming up for marketplace purchases. So I think it depends on, you know, who you're talking to and you have to have a value statement. I think that's probably my new kind of catchphrase for finops is people don't see the value in what you're doing, it will be very hard for them to want to get on board.

Alon Arvatz: Yes.

Tammy Burnitt: That's, I think that's your paid dirt, right? When you can get to that and you can, I think that's, I think that's when I saw people trying to turn the corner is what is the value? I always say, you know, what's your elevator pitch if you get stuck with the CEO or the CFO in the elevator? You know, how do you articulate what do I do here and how am I delivering value?

And I think that transcends to a bunch of different careers and disciplines. But I think for finops per se, and I also, um, one of my best mentors in the finops community. Kim Ware from Target says it needs to be finops plus something else Sometimes finops [00:05:00] can't stand on itself alone. So if you can find something that you can attach to finops, so is it finops and ai or finops and you know, something else, right? Uh, or security or, but finops, I feel like the more people I talk to and the more that I work in this industry and I work with people, sometimes people can't see the value unless you attach the framework. To something else, to, to a, a philosophy or a product. Or a technology, right?

Alon Arvatz: For sure. Uh, you actually said a few very, very fascinating things. Uh, the first thing that I'm also taking from what you said on top of the, uh, insights you shared is the fact that you should also identify the pain points. Of the stakeholders, like this finance guy you talked about, he was having a really hard time reporting on these costs.

He needed help. This engineer, he, he, he wants to do AI better, so he needs someone to help to guide him through how to use it. So how do you [00:06:00] do that? Like how do you identify the pain points and actually lead the discussion around that?

Tammy Burnitt: You know, at least for me when I'm. Implementing finops or, you know, I'm, I'm going to a new stakeholder. I try and do an assessment, so I, I'm very curious and I probe and I ask more questions probably than I do talk and I just listen a lot. And so by probing and by really trying to understand, you know, what's your wishlist?

Like, you know, if you had a wishlist, like, and then if they don't necessarily give me maybe some of the wishes that I think they need, then I'll start kind of planning some ideas. So, so kind of, you know, like, well, so what I'm hearing is, you know, and then I'll throw some things out there, but I think first you have to kind of do an assessment.

I, I love to say a maturity assessment of where is everybody, or, you know, if, if they've got some of the capabilities and domains in place. to figure out how to fill in the blanks. But everybody, you know, I think when you listen to people and you probe and you really try and understand what their pain points are, they really open up to you. And that's where you get all of your [00:07:00] data, you know, for your assessment. And then you can kind of come back and go, okay, like, you know, here's, here's where we need to start and here's my recommendations. But you get so much information going on and talking to people and asking questions. 'cause we all, those of us that have been in finops for a long time, you know, we obviously know what we're doing, but. Finops looks different everywhere at every, you know, different companies in different personas, like it's a good framework, but you're gonna have to modify that to what works the role or the company or the technology where you are, right?

Alon Arvatz: Well, Tammy, I love it and I love it because what you just described is the best practices for sales, like. The A, b, C of sales is start with asking questions to uncover pain points, and then you can start talking and offer your services or your products, et cetera. Do you feel this sometimes as a finops leader, you're also kind of a salesperson across the organization?

Tammy Burnitt: [00:08:00] 100% that is going to, that will definitely be a skillset that you need to have in your repertoire. Um, the, the gift of gab, the gift of really being, I, I think sales also, you have to kinda be an empath and you have to understand where people's pain points are, how long they've been having these pain points, um, but also you're trying to give them hope, like, you know, have no fear, like, we're gonna get through this together.

Right.

Alon Arvatz: Yeah, and especially be a leader because otherwise things won't move ahead, especially in finops.

Tammy Burnitt: absolutely. And sometimes I think also along with that is. You know, diplomacy skills and you can't fit a square peg in a round hole. So just kind of taking a deep breath and saying, okay, and being able to look at a situation from multiple angles. Again, sales, you're, you're, you, you are selling something, it's finops, right?

And you have to, you're trying to get somebody on board with it. So hopefully you have some good soft skills and you got some tricks up your sleeve. But really, um. It's, [00:09:00] it's a journey, not a race. So you just have to be patient and take a deep breath and, you know, hopefully you, you know, people will, you know, you can get to that objective or that value statement really quickly after you've done your, your assessment and you can regroup and figure out what's, what's the plan of action.

So.

Alon Arvatz: Very interesting, and Tammy, something I've been planning to ask you for a while. So at Shell, you founded the FinOps program and community. I wonder why you call it community. It's the first time I'm hearing this term in the context of the FinOps program and what does it mean to run the FinOps community at the company?

I.

Tammy Burnitt: Well, the community of practice is exactly that. It's a group of, you know, stakeholders or personas, if you will, that we're all, we all have a common goal, right? So again, we wanna define that via charter, but a community. me, it means a bunch of different things. Um, it's about education enablement. It's about lifting people up. It's about developing the [00:10:00] collaborative muscle that we need, right, to further invoke either a framework or, you know, ways of working within an organization. You can imagine the size of Shell, A community where it's people helping people, people celebrating successes. And you would be surprised when you celebrate people and you share their victories, whether it's a gamification or a podcast, how did you do that?

Or a newsletter? Um, you would be surprised how it elevates and kind of accelerates, if you will, your objectives. Right.

Alon Arvatz: For sure, and it's absolutely amazing to see how. The first challenge you encountered as a ops person, which is the resistance you got from people around you, was then translated into building a finops community. So moving from resistance and maybe conflict, you can say

Tammy Burnitt: Mm-hmm.

Alon Arvatz: Community and a place where everyone can work together, achieve their goals together, [00:11:00] and celebrate that.

Tammy Burnitt: Kind of tricky how we do that, right? We move from resistance to recognition everybody loves recognition. And so I think just personas have different goals and objectives, right? Just like they have different personalities. And so think the, probably one of the most important things about being a, a finops director or finops practitioner is figuring out what does make, what makes people tick.

And once you can figure that out. Everyone will fall in line. Everyone will be clamoring at the door to get on board. And, you know, people aren't gonna do something that they don't like or they don't find fun, or they don't see value in. And that's your job is to figure out, as you said it previously, how to sell that. Right?

Alon Arvatz: Absolutely. And how do you drive this, say, recognition and celebrating the success?

Tammy Burnitt: Oh my goodness. We give, we give certificates, we give awards, we give gamification. Um, so much recognition, uh, when someone has a success. Is a teaching moment. So we used to do a podcast five, 10 minutes, [00:12:00] you know, how did you find this savings? And then how did you work across, you know, multiple, uh, or organizations or delivery verticals to implement it?

What would you have done differently? What were some of your learning lessons? And then that we use that recognition in it. Not only is it recognition, but it's also a teaching moments to somebody else that may be struggling with that very same thing going, okay, I'm gonna go implement that now in my, um, landscape. Or my enterprise. So

Alon Arvatz: And when you say podcast, you mean literally like sitting with the engineer and interviewing him about what he did?

Tammy Burnitt: yes. I mean, we didn't have like the sophisticated, um, podcast set up like you have, but we would, we would do a teams recording and we would go back and forth, and that was one of the ways we celebrated people, the gamification, um, speaking engagements. Come to our finops community of call, community call and do a four page PowerPoint on what you did. I mean, it's, you would be surprised. And then, um, workshops. So once we got our [00:13:00] education enablement done people would get their finops certification, I'm not teaching it anymore. I'm like, you guys, know, you, you got this. So empowering people to be able to perpetuate the success of the program, right?

Mm-hmm.

Alon Arvatz: no, for sure. That's great. And I always recommend the opening podcasts,

Tammy Burnitt: Oh

Alon Arvatz: so if anyone here wanna start a Enos PO podcast in this organization is welcome to reach out to me or Tammy and ask about how we do that.

Tammy Burnitt: Absolutely.

Alon Arvatz: how do you distribute these, uh, podcasts or learnings across the engineering organization?

Tammy Burnitt: Well, we, similar to Slack, we had channels and then we would post things on the channel, and then people, we would get people to join the channel and, um, then we would kind of, I, I don't remember what they were using, but we would count like how many people would access the podcast or access, you know, the, the new, you know, maybe it was a playbook or run book or something that we would put out there and we kind of track. The, um, effectiveness, if you will, of the material, whether it was in video format or gamification or, [00:14:00] um, a newsletter highlighting, or here's a blog, let's go talk about a blog. So I think there are many facets of. communicating, um, that reach people that learn differently, right? Some people love to listen to podcasts in the car.

I'm that person. Or, you know, if I'm riding somewhere and I have some extra time, I'll listen to a podcast. So I think not, you know, whether some people learn through written, some people learn through Audible, but you're really trying to hit everybody in a different way to kind of get them in the fold, if you will.

Alon Arvatz: For sure, and it's actually very fascinating. You know, we've talked to this podcast many times about measurements and metrics, and it always goes to budget and cost and efficiency and savings, but you're saying something completely else. When you have your measurement, you should also measure engineering engagement.

Because that, that's part of the program to get engineers engaged, to get them to take action. So you have to [00:15:00] measure how much you educate them, uh, how much they engage with finops content, how much they aware of the finops program. Uh, do you have like measurements around that, like beyond the podcast, is there anything else that you measured around engineering engagement?

Tammy Burnitt: On engineer engagement, we measure, uh, well, we give them KPIs. So in my past, you know, we created scorecards so we could kind of gauge, and I always say a little friendly competition is good. So we would, we would have scorecards and. If one team was doing better than another team, we would invite them to come and tell how or why, you know, you know, maybe their efficiency score or, you know, their, their coin metric or you know, whether it was RIS or how to optimize things. Uh, people love to share their successes and I think. offering it in those different, uh, mediums, whether it's v visual recorded, read it also, we, we tried not to bog people down with meetings too. So we gave people the opportunity, opportunity to participate and [00:16:00] learn whatever was fit for purpose for them. And so I think people, think they appreciated the fact that we weren't, it wasn't just another meeting for the sake of having a meeting. We were really trying to reach them through a bunch of different avenues. So our KPIs could vary from the number of certifications we had, the number of people that met their K, you know, their coin metric or their effective savings rate for their ris, or, um, you know, who was using automation versus who wasn't.

I mean, there was quite a bit of KPIs that were measuring to do that. But the people, what was interesting is, is the people, there's a little bit of friendly competition. So the people that weren't meeting their efficiency scores were like, Hey, how do I get better? And then there was a whole channel of information. But I think when you say community, what I hear when I think of community and, and the finops community that I'm in is people helping people. And I think once you get people involved, everybody is so willing and so happy to help people. 'cause they kind of remember where they were in their journey and they're like, let me help you kind [00:17:00] of get here.

Alon Arvatz: Cool. So data-driven cloud efficiency. I think you might have just started the movement here, Tammy.

Tammy Burnitt: Oh, sorry.

Alon Arvatz: And then we talked a bit about your experience at Shell, and I know that you recently started a new role at UiPath, and I'm sure many of our listeners either starting now a new role or will start new role somewhere in the future.

I wonder what is your advice on how to get into a new company and what are the first things you need to do?

Tammy Burnitt: Hmm. Well, I think there's a couple of, there's a couple of answers there, A couple of recommendations. I would say figure out how they work, what other ways of working, because coming from a big organization to coming to a smaller organization, people's ways of working are different, And so figure out what the ways of working are. Figure out where do an assessment, right? We don't wanna just come in there and say, this is how we do finops. We wanna come in there and figure out, we wanna recognize. Um, [00:18:00] the hard work and the effort that's been put in, and then as we're doing that. You know, we're kind of documenting, uh, from a maturity level, what, what probably needs to be done. Get out there and meet everybody that you can. Um, I think you do have to kind of have a sales mindset. You, you don't really wanna be kind of introverted. You wanna just get out there and say, how you doing? My name is Tammy Burnitt. Introduce yourself. Touch as many people as you can and make sure that they know who you are. And then slowly kind of start to roll out your assessment, but, you know, figure out what your data is. Figure out, you know, what's in place and then kind of make your recommendations. But I would say start slow. 'cause you can't just come at everybody and hit 'em over the head with everything. Right? I would say this is a priority and this is why, and this is the second priority and this is why, and this is a third priority, but also, you know, have those roles and recommendations.

So if you come to people with recommendations, you gotta show 'em what your plan is. So again, back to that CCOE. Do, making sure you got those, those, uh, persona information and the ra, the roles and responsibilities there, and then what does it look [00:19:00] like from a charter? You know, if you're going, chances are, if you're in a finops role, you're either a team of one or a team of two or three, and you can, you can't bite off more than you can chew.

And so figure out, you know. Another way you could probably effectively deliver, and I'm speaking for myself because a lot of finops people have to deliver through engineering, understand how DevOps works, epics stories, story points, delivery. Uh, that's probably gonna be your best friend. And showing your momentum in finops and you know, how quickly people are, are either adopting things or maybe we don't have enough resources and backlogs are, are coming into play.

But I think thinking of finops as a product, which in a larger company. Maybe that's not

Alon Arvatz: Wow.

Tammy Burnitt: Prevalent, but in some cases, yes, in some cases, no. And so, but first and foremost, what, what the ways of working are, assessment and then, but you're gonna, you're not planning alone. You, you're gonna probably have some people that have to deliver through. And so that's where, you know, you'll have runway.

Alon Arvatz: [00:20:00] Awesome. And something that you shared with me in the past, and I think it can be very, also very relevant, is the fact that you should strive to have small wins very quickly. Do you have some ideas for small, small wins you can find when you go into a new finops role?

Tammy Burnitt: I mean, absolutely. I think the, the small wins are anything that you requires a minimum effort, but a big savings, right? So that would be example of a small win. So, um, we talk a lot about shifting left and what does that mean for finops? Well, that's moving finops at the onset of provisioning. So making sure you have some kind of controls out there that no matter what they deploy into the enterprise infrastructure, gonna pick that up and save some money.

And I'm talking about automating maybe your commitments, your RIS and your savings plans. There are tools out there that can auto autonomously automate that function. Um, and then just knowing what tools are available to you and what the quick wins are, uh, the [00:21:00] quick wins are least amount of effort. Most amount of savings and they're out there, whether it's your maybe you can shut some machines off. Um, but know the difference between what is real savings, like lowering the rate that you pay for something, and the difference between cost savings, which is reducing the rate that you're paying for something by being more effective in use of the resources.

Alon Arvatz: Yeah, for sure.

Tammy Burnitt: But I would say those are quick wins.

Yeah. And just, I, I'm, I'm on the AI work group and we're actually authoring some papers right now on. Because people may not know AI is so new, but what are the tools available to you? What, what, what are we talked about a couple of 'em before we started the podcast today. So I think knowing what tools are available to you and where your quick wins are, again, I say it again. Least amount of effort, biggest amount of savings.

Alon Arvatz: Yes. And you know, it is very interesting when you talked about, uh, quick wins and some of the first thing you do. Uh, you talked a lot about, uh, cost optimization and I think it's pretty agreed in the industry that finops is not [00:22:00] about cost optimization or not only about cost optimization is a lot about showing the business value, but I think something that you need to remember about cost optimization is that it helps you create.

Measurable outcomes and measurable value that can then help you justify very easily to management why they need finops and why they also need to invest finops more than they invest today. And that's a way to get potentially more headcount or more budget for tooling because, um, it is very easy to see the ROI on that.

Uh. That, is that part of the benefit of the quick wins that you're talking about? Like, you know, justifying ops and also expanding finops over time.

Tammy Burnitt: Absolutely. I mean, your quick wins are, um, and you'll find this out really quickly, right? 'cause you'll, you'll have all of these initiatives, right? You'll [00:23:00] have this backlog or all of these opportunities and know, if you can't really do finops with just one or two or three people and you know, so I think, and also understanding. With these new expanded scopes. So you have quick wins and we're, you know, we will talk just about the cloud, right? But then you, it, it, it goes so far beyond the cloud. It goes into your SaaS, you know, how are you doing there? You know, you're, you also have to manage your, um, you know, if you have a SaaS product where you're supposed to be looking at your consumption, you don't wanna go over there.

So I think in terms of quick wins and expanding finops and showing the value of finops, you really have to understand the organization strategy as well. So, you know, what is their strategy in terms of their spend, whether it's production spend or non-production spend. You need to spend some time getting to know your finance people, getting to know your product people, and figure out what the company's strategy is.

So then you can make sure that the plan that you're making, whether it's quick wins or even, you know, I call 'em near term, short term and long term, um, priorities, [00:24:00] that they align with the business' strategy. And so when you're making up your plan and you're trying to sell finops, you know. what you're trying to do is say, hopefully you, you're trying to get to your margins.

Hopefully you're trying to help people figure that out. Um, everything that you do hopefully should be proving the value on the investment in cloud, whether that's the efficiency, right? Your, your coin metric on your consumption of your resources. Um, how well are you doing in your ris, what your effective savings rate? Maybe have some sustainability in there, but really at the end of the day. Hopefully you're helping them and we always, we haven't talked about this yet, but you mentioned it before and I'll reiterate it. Budgets and forecasts and anomaly detection. You know, you're gonna have a A person, maybe a CTO or CFO, and they're like, why can't, why is my spend all over the place is not predictable? bypass that step or that capability a lot and they just wanna run to the cost optimization. It is probably the most missed. Domain and capability of finops that I see and I talk to other people about. Right? [00:25:00] And it's also the hardest one to implement 'cause it's data driven. You just mentioned that,

Alon Arvatz: Yeah.

Tammy Burnitt: If you don't have your data in the right place, how are you gonna build a forecast?

Budgets or anomaly detection? Right? So again, when you're doing that assessment and you're trying to prove the value of finops, you know, we come in there as SMEs and we're like, all right, here's the opportunity. know, here's how they're tied together. would you like to proceed? Right.

Alon Arvatz: Yeah, absolutely. And tell me, when you talk about anomaly detection, uh, do you talk about any spike in cost or you talk more specifically around, Hey, there is now a jump in cost that take us off budget. Like what do you think we should monitor? I.

Tammy Burnitt: My goodness. Anomaly detection comes in so many forms, and I'm glad you're talking about this. It could be, um, I was talking to a, a brand in the industry the other day. It can come in the form of I'm supposed to buy this ri. And my, and this is a tool I was talking about. My, my provider that automates my ri says, Hey, the [00:26:00] pricing doesn't match what's on your pricing sheet. That's one anomaly, right? Um, making, you know, pricing changes can be maybe when you switch to a EA to a Mac, um, for example. And, you know, maybe you're making sure that the, the old pricing, you know, the new pricing kicks in. So there's a variety of anomalies or. Hopefully your data is aggregated, which is very important at the hourly level.

So if somebody just launches something out there, whether it's a LLM, you know, or something, an agent, you know, and maybe it's ramping up really quickly, hopefully you're gonna be able to catch that within a couple of hours instead of the following day, right? So I think anomalies come in different shapes and forms, and you definitely wanna be on top of that. Whether it's you're using some of, you know, this AI technology to figure it out, you know, maybe it's machine learning or, you know, but you've gotta have some thresholds and you, you gotta start somewhere, you know, it'll be, it'll be a work in progress for sure. But anomalies will kill you. know, if you don't have, if [00:27:00] you don't have something in place to, to, and the suppliers aren't gonna tell you, Hey, we got that pricing wrong. You know, you're usually the one bringing it to the suppliers. So, um, you know, and again. Build versus buy. Um, I can't stress that enough. Whatever tool you're talking about, whether we're talking about A CFM or a host of other tools, um, you know, market standard where you can, um, I, I do know people that build these things, but they have a whole team of engineers to do it, the folks that aren't using the C fms.

So you know how to write a business case to kind of say, this is the way and this is what we need to be doing. That's definitely a skill set as well.

Alon Arvatz: For sure, and basically anomalies like you just said, it's not only spike in usage, it can also be changes in pricing models. It can be changes that the cloud provider did that

Tammy Burnitt: Yeah.

Alon Arvatz: had zero control on, or it can be an an. Our I or a saving plan that was just expired and created a change [00:28:00] in the, uh, in the price.

Tammy Burnitt: Mm-hmm.

Alon Arvatz: So you have to understand what caused the anomaly and personally, I dunno if that's your experience as well, but my experience is that the biggest challenge around anomaly detection is actually the root cause analysis. Okay. You know, you know that something spiked. What happened Is it spike in in the price, in usage?

What, what happened? And I think that's the hard part and I think that's what's something that in most tools miss today, how to help you also get to this bottom line root cause analysis. And it creates a lot of burden on engineers because today they need to do it, uh, manually.

Tammy Burnitt: A hundred percent I could, I could not agree more. Your cost oscillations. So we take, we take an anomaly. Detection is one of them, but hopefully you're explaining to your finance, your CTO or your CFO every month. Hopefully at the end of the month, I'm getting ready to go through this next week. You've got start looking at your costs again and saying what increase and what decrease.

Now that's not as [00:29:00] granular level as an anomaly, but as a finops person. You should be reaching out to your engineers and understand why your costs are oscillating. Absolutely. For anomalies. Hopefully you've got something that can tip you off. I'm looking at spend every day. It's the first thing I do when I get up in the morning and I drink my coffee and I'm like, are we on track?

Right? But you know, you, you do need a mechanism to kind of tip you off and then, you know, you kind of work from there. But you, as you said, you'll have the kind of spiky anomalies and then you're gonna have your anomalies every month. What went up? What went down and why? And was it planned right?

Alon Arvatz: Absolutely. Well, Tammy, I think I have like 10 more questions, like questions I prepared before the meeting, questions that came up as we talked. But um, I think it's really time to learn about you more personally. Uh, I think we already learn a lot from your rich experience in finops, but uh, again, uh, to me it's always actually even more interesting to learn about the person himself.

So share with us, first of all, uh, uh, [00:30:00] where do you live today? And how you got there.

Tammy Burnitt: I live in Houston, Texas today, and I actually was born and raised here, so my family is from the uk and so I'm, I'm here. I, I would go back periodically to the uk, but I was, I was born and mostly raised in Houston, Texas for my early upbringing. And, um. Yeah, I was just here. I mean, I, I, I didn't have, I don't have a big story about how I got here, but yeah.

Alon Arvatz: Okay. No, that's great. Growing up, uh, living where you grew up, it's, it's great and typically also means that you're close to your family or some of your family, which is also awesome. I personally live like five minutes walk from my sister. Okay. That's absolutely amazing. Absolutely amazing. Especially when need backup for kids or stuff like that.

So I'm all in for that. And you basically was able to take over the finops, uh, car license plate in [00:31:00] Texas.

Tammy Burnitt: Yes. I think I'm one of, like, I am all in, I'm drinking the Kool-Aid. I think I, I've had it now for about three, three years or so, and I think I'm only one, one of like four or five in the us. I think there's one in Utah and there's one, uh, somewhere else, but there's, there's like three or four of us. Yeah.

Alon Arvatz: Yeah, I should have gotten the New Jersey one when I lived in New Jersey.

Tammy Burnitt: Oh, yes, yes.

Alon Arvatz: Cool. Is there a story behind it? Like how did you make a decision to buy the license plate?

Tammy Burnitt: I think I just, I was like, wouldn't it be cool, you know, to put something on my card that I'm just super passionate about? And, and I think, you know, I had, um. I was in transition, you know, I was buying, I always buy cars, like pre-owned, but I was like, I wonder if I can, you know, and I was going, typing in all the different variations and I was like, oh, look, no one has this one, right?

And I thought, what, what is passionate to me that I would like to put on the back of my car? So, and one time I was stopped and somebody was honking and they were like, that's a really cool license plate. And [00:32:00] I, I was like, wow, somebody actually knows what it means, right? Because most people don't. So.

Alon Arvatz: Everyone knows what finops is, and everyone cares about finops, right?

Tammy Burnitt: We hope. We

Alon Arvatz: We hope that's the goal. That's the goal. And one day, one day we'll get there. One day they'll get there

Tammy Burnitt: Absolutely.

Alon Arvatz: And I have to ask about all the signed footballs behind you, like are they yours and who signed them?

Tammy Burnitt: those are my fiance's footballs, and they are like Houston Texans or Minnesota Vikings. He's from Iowa, so he's a big Minnesota fan. This is, hi, I'm actually sitting at his desk today, but that, those are all of his little signed footballs and helmets and so he is a big football fanatic. So

Alon Arvatz: Okay. You like football?

Tammy Burnitt: I love football.

I mean, again, I grew up with rugby and soccer, but you know, I, I, I like American football. It's nice.

Alon Arvatz: Yeah. Yeah. I, I prefer soccer honestly, but American football is definitely very interesting as well.

Tammy Burnitt: It is.

Alon Arvatz: And, uh, Tammy, do you have any book or movie you'd like to recommend [00:33:00] us?

Tammy Burnitt: so I have been reading a couple of books. I had to kind of, I put them down 'cause I was trying to finish my AI certification, but one. recommended this to the women in finops, and it's called Be the Unicorn. And you know, I, I oftentimes try and read books about leadership or just, you know, in, in general like what's trending, you know, in corporate America.

And this particular book is about data-driven habits. And so I kinda liked the title. I was like, it looked cute. And then when I started, you know, reading the. Intro in the book jacket. I was like, oh, this is, this is interesting. And so it does talk about these different categories of data-driven habits and like being prepared, being purpose-driven, being productive, um, being curious, self-aware.

Um, some of these are like soft skills. Some of these are just, you know, facets of your, um, professional. You know, repertoire that you would want to enhance and then anticipate. So I feel when I, when I looked at that last one, I'm like, I feel like that's one that I honed really well in my previous life. Um, at Shell, [00:34:00] I feel like My boss was always like, you never ask a question without knowing what the answer is or then anticipating what the next question you're gonna get asked is. And so I, I feel like that's one that I am very, um, keen. Uh, I keenly developed that skill and so I'm always just looking for ways to where I can kind of sharpen my presence and my performance and my execution in, in, in terms of finops.

And I feel like if I'm constantly developing or like I got my AI. Uh, finops AI last week. I, I just, I think you're always gonna be learning right?

Alon Arvatz: For sure. And, and Tammy, you seem like a very intentional, uh, person in general. Uh, I wonder what do you like to do when you're not so intentional and you just wanna do something for fun?

Tammy Burnitt: Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, I love antiquing. Uh, I used to be, I used to be in a home building business, believe it or not. And so I did a lot of design, interior design. I still do for some of my friends. Um, [00:35:00] just refinished, remodeling my home. I like to garden. just kind of quiet moments, just, that's kind of my woo saw is just. You know, I, I think that's my, I kind of lean into my creative side. I, I'm so technical and so data-driven and go, go, go in my day life. Outside of that, I just, I wanna kind of lean into that creative side and, and really kind of explore, um, you know, the slower pace, shall we say.

Alon Arvatz: We should all look for some slower pace moments and some quiet, because you know, these phones are driving us crazy,

Tammy Burnitt: Right.

Alon Arvatz: so

Tammy Burnitt: us

crazy.

Alon Arvatz: need to find ways to stay away, disconnect a little bit. And honestly, that's a lot of inspiration for me because I also need to do it a lot more.

Tammy Burnitt: so true.

Alon Arvatz: Tammy. Um, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. I'm absolutely positive that our listeners would like to reach out and ask questions. What is the best way to reach out for [00:36:00] you?

Tammy Burnitt: They can reach out to me on, on LinkedIn. They can reach out if they're, if you're in the, um, if you're in the finops Slack, send me a dm. one of those, one of those ways.

Alon Arvatz: Awesome. And now I'm taking with me a lot of insights. Uh, but one of the key ones that I particularly liked is that finops is also a sales. Position

Tammy Burnitt: It

Alon Arvatz: and you should implement sales methodologies like discovery questions, mapping out pain points, doing this assessment you talked about when you start a new role, for example, and only then start to act.

Okay? Don't, don't rush to it. So.

Tammy Burnitt: don't rush to it. But I think also, and I'll leave everyone with this, figure out what your non-negotiables are and what are your minimum table stakes. because when you go in there and use that terminology, those are, those are pretty strong words. And so you have to know what is the bare minimum that you can do to deliver this program.

And, and if you don't know, [00:37:00] like I said, reach me on, on chat or LinkedIn or whatever, but you know, there's, there's a minimum level of which you can go in and do finops. And that's what I call table stakes. And you, think some people are afraid to, like we were talking about it before we started the podcast, like you, you gotta be able to say, Hey, this is in the way

Alon Arvatz: Yes.

Tammy Burnitt: And that's okay. But you know that as a subject matter expert, what will and will not work. So say, you know, figure out what your non-negotiables are and stand behind that. Right.

Alon Arvatz: And Tammy, thank you for offering your help,

Tammy Burnitt: Thanks.

Alon Arvatz: your insights, and generally just giving me a lot of fun time talking to you. It was really awesome. Thank you for joining us. I would also like to thank our audience, uh, for joining us once again. Again, tell your friend about the podcast like you do every time.

This time is not different. We wanna expand the reach, make sure more people are listening to the podcast. Tammy, thank you again. This has been another fun, exciting, interesting, fascinating, insightful episode of Ops in [00:38:00] Action. See you next time.

Speaker: That wraps up another episode of finops in Action. Thank you for joining. For show notes and more, please visit finops in action.com. This show is brought to you by 0.5, empowering teams to optimize cloud costs with tip detection and remediation tools that drive action.