Playbook
The cloud bill jumped 40% and no one can explain why
A CFO has flagged an unexpected 40% rise in Azure spend over two months. The platform team can see the totals but cannot allocate cost to teams or workloads — tags are inconsistent, subscriptions are mixed, and forecasting is missing. Finance wants accountability and a reliable forecast within the quarter.
Trigger — CFO escalation; cost spike with no clear cause.
Good outcome — Tagged cost allocation per team, forecast model live, quarterly FinOps cadence established.