From Plaid Shirts to Optimal Performance: Lessons from Bass Guitar and Jam Sessions

I firmly believe that music and mathematics transcend linguistic boundaries, serving as the most universal languages, surpassing even English. In fact, both are prominently featured on my CV and LinkedIn profile under the category of 'Idioms,' signifying their profound influence on my thinking. Many of my ideas are born from these concepts.

Finding Financial Harmony: Insights from a Bass Player Guitarist

During the 90s, I had the opportunity to play bass guitar in a rock band. Plaid shirts, long hair, beards, and long hours playing our favourite songs. A Cloud Technology Team could be like a Band.

Using this analogy, the drums would be the security team; setting the pace for others to follow. The engineering and operations team are like the electric and acoustic guitars that set the tune, shine in solos, and enjoy great attention. The product team is undoubtedly the lead singer, who captures the attention of customers and can anticipate audience reactions. And finally, the cloud FinOps team is closest to the bass guitar.

It guides the rest in the rhythm, is closely connected to security, offers the best practices for optimisation, does not stand out at any given moment, but is the central part of the group. In reggae music, someone said that the bass is the heart of the lion. This is how I understand the role of a FinOps practitioner in technology teams: a passion for excellence, a servant leader who understands the relationships within the band and knows when it is their moment to play.

How Jam Sessions Inspire Cost Analysis and Optimisation

I fondly remember the concerts we gave but even more fondly the jam sessions of afternoon Sundays. A jam session is an informal meeting of musical improvisation, a gathering of musicians with some affinity that play unwritten and unrehearsed music for their enjoyment. It is documented that great songs have emerged from jam sessions.

The most valuable ceremony I have found and introduced into my routines as a Cloud FinOps lead is a particularly unique jam session where I invite colleagues from other departments, those with some affinity for cloud technology, present data and engage them in an open conversation about resources, their uses, costs, but above all else, the FinOps team can gather questions.

The value of the jam session can be understood as a perfect scenario to influence, end cost-ignorance and generate curiosity that can lead to an appetite for optimisation. However, then, it would not be a jam session, it would be a teaching session where we influence and educate, spreading cost consciousness and the best practices.

Unlocking the Intangible: The Hidden Value of Jam Sessions

There is another great value, more related with innovation and leadership. The FinOps team is constantly exposed to information patterns and perspectives. We have biases in our reasoning and assimilated structures.

In optimisation, we are adults who have travelled the road 100 times. The questions that can be asked of us in jam sessions should not be judged.

" Adults follow the paths, children explore." (Neil Gaiman).

The new questions, the "why", are not an evaluation of the quality of our work. They are a window to understand how optimisation is (or is not) present in other teams, understand their motivations, their priorities. Nobody has a model free from other influences, but a different model. It allows us to reduce our biases and discover new vectors of change. The ultimate ambition of the FinOps team as evangelist of change is for optimisation to be invisible, residing in each colleague.

"Every day is still a blank page with thousands of possibilities for optimisation. I choose not to waste". Sergio Molina