In this episode of the FinOps Weekly podcast, Victor is joined by Frank from Coblan to discuss a major shift in how companies manage cloud costs. They dive into why traditional "bottom-up" FinOps often fails and how a "top-down" strategy can lead to better results.

Frank explains that asking engineers to fix things without a clear strategy is a common mistake. Instead, leadership should set the vision and constraints, allowing technical teams to work effectively within a defined "sandbox."

Key topics covered in this episode:

• Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up: Why FinOps teams should look to leadership for priorities rather than relying solely on automated tool recommendations [03:55].

• Context is Everything: Why raw numbers like "46%" or "$300,000" are useless without understanding the business goals and profit margins behind them [19:54].

• The Power of Constraints: How setting clear technical limits can actually free developers to be more creative and productive [15:59].

• Speaking the Language of Finance: A real-world example of how translating cloud terms (like Reserved Instances) into financial concepts can win over a CFO [11:12].

• Actionable Advice: The importance of reading your company's strategy reports and working with Product Owners to get FinOps tasks into the official backlog [50:01].

If you want to move beyond just "chasing savings" and start driving real business value through your cloud strategy, this conversation provides the roadmap.

Watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNsEYhUvsB0

• (00:00:00) - Top Down Finops
• (00:00:43) - Franc Contrepoix
• (00:02:35) - Top-Down Finops vs Bottom Down Finops
• (00:08:01) - CFO: We're in a Cloud Bubble
• (00:10:31) - Questions about Reserved Installs
• (00:13:15) - WSJDLive: The Process of Cascading Rules
• (00:13:49) - Constraints in the Software Development Process
• (00:18:15) - Context is everything in data visualization
• (00:25:12) - The Context of Decision Making
• (00:29:31) - The cloud and its risks
• (00:32:41) - One of the good things of cloud
• (00:36:18) - Common Mistakes in the Cloud Financial Data
• (00:41:20) - Finance & IT: The Need for Collaboration Tools
• (00:47:58) - Top-down vs bottom-up
• (00:51:30) - Promotion for Managers