Why FinOps Fails Without Governance & Culture ft. Ben de Mora, Former GitLab | Ep 33

FinOps in Action

Is FinOps really just about dashboards and tools, or is it more about people, culture, and governance?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sat down with Ben de Mora, former FinOps Lead at GitLab, to explore how FinOps needs to evolve beyond tooling into governance, collaboration, and product management thinking.

Ben shares his unique journey from security and engineering into FinOps, and explains why champions programs, federated FinOps models, and executive sponsorship are essential for success at scale. He also dives into how sustainability metrics can engage engineers, and why policies and governance need to evolve — not just be written once and forgotten.

Here’s what we talked about:

• Why tooling alone doesn’t solve FinOps challenges
• How FinOps is like product management
• Building scalable FinOps with champions and federated models
• Using sustainability data to motivate engineers
• Governance done right: policies, guardrails, and continuous improvement

If you're trying to scale a FinOps practice, engage engineering teams, and reduce cloud waste—this conversation is packed with insights you can use right now.

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Quote of the Show:

• "When you show somebody any data that shows that they're making a positive impact on the planet, they care. They really care. And a lot more focus is put into doing things." - Ben de Mora

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bendemora/

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