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 can't allocate cost to teams or workloads — tagging is inconsistent, subscriptions are mixed, and there's no forecast. Finance wants accountability and a reliable forecast within the quarter.
Trigger — CFO escalation; cost spike with no clear cause.
Good outcome — Every dollar of cloud spend is tagged back to a team and a workload. Finance has a forecast that's reliable within a few percent, and the quarterly review with engineering is a working conversation, not a fight.