Five Maturity Levels
Level 1 (Chaos): No cost visibility. Engineers provision freely. Cloud bill is a surprise. Level 2 (Monitoring): Basic dashboards exist. Monthly cost review. Tagging started. Level 3 (Optimization): Cost allocation by team. Reserved instances in use. Right-sizing active. Level 4 (Accountability): Team-level budgets. ShowBack/ChargeBack. Cost in architecture decisions. Level 5 (Business Value): Unit economics per feature. Cost-per-user tracking. FinOps embedded in engineering culture.