Cost Allocation & Showback Platform  ·  View 03 of 22  ·  2 · People and journeys

Actors and Their Core Journeys

Seven actors, including two that are not people and one who is usually forgotten: the owner of the shared cluster.

Editable source SVG draw.io All views
Engineering Engineering lead one of 450 Goal — Tell me what my team costs, and let me prove to my own engineers which change caused the number to move. Core journeys Explain a cost spike the load-bearing journey Fix my team's tag gaps Set a budget for next quarter Shared platform owner clusters, warehouse Goal — Do not hand me the whole cluster bill. Split it by a rule my tenants can read and argue with. Core journeys Publish an apportionment rule Defend the idle line Finance and FinOps Finance controller monthly close Goal — Give me one frozen number per cost centre that reconciles to the invoice and does not change after I have reported it. Core journeys Close and publish the month 5 business days Absorb a restatement FinOps analyst policy owner Goal — Let me change an allocation rule and see, before I adopt it, exactly whose bill it moves and by how much. Core journeys Simulate a policy change Chase the unallocated remainder Product owner 28 lines Goal — Show me cost per order, and tell me whether it went up because we grew or because we got worse. Core journeys Review unit economics Machines and feeds Provider billing export 3 clouds, daily Goal — I deliver yesterday, and I silently rewrite last week. Cope with that. Core journeys Deliver a restated period Business driver feed team-owned Goal — I am a denominator somebody else maintains, and I go stale without telling anyone. Core journeys Post a daily driver value Actors and Their Core Journeys Person or role Journey / task External / third party Security / platform The shared platform owner is in the cast because apportionment is negotiated with them, not imposed on them. v 1.0 · owner Platform Architecture · date 2026-09

Why these actors

  • The engineering lead is the only actor who can act on the number; everyone else can only read or argue with it
  • The shared platform owner is in the cast because apportionment is negotiated with them, not imposed on them
  • The provider billing export is an actor because it has behaviour — it arrives late and rewrites the past
  • The business driver feed is an actor because it goes stale silently, and a stale denominator is a wrong unit cost

The two journeys that carry the value

  • Explain a cost spike — if this fails, the platform is decoration
  • Close and publish the month — if this fails, the platform cannot become chargeback

Not represented

  • Executives, who consume the product owner's view rather than their own
  • Auditors, who read the immutable statement and audit stores rather than the platform
◀  High-Level Architecture All views Journey — Explain a Cost Spike  ▶
Solution Architecture v1.0 · Microsoft Azure · Cost & Efficiency Architecture · 2026-0903-actors-and-journeys