Patterns / 5. Changing the Flows
Pattern 5.1
Showback Before Chargeback
Measure each unit’s use of a shared service and show it to them, and to finance, before (or instead of) billing them for it.
In This Context
When a shared resource is billed to one budget and consumed by many, the people spending don’t feel the cost. The obvious fix, chargeback, gets visibility at the price of restructuring: teams change the system to change the bill. Meanwhile, any case for a saving needs a baseline, and units can’t agree a baseline for a cost they can’t see.
You notice this when a shared bill sits on one line with no breakdown by user, or when proposed savings are disputed because nobody can say what anyone uses today.
Therefore
Start showing usage before charging for it.
- Produce a regular (for example, monthly) report of each unit’s platform and cloud use, and share it with the units and with finance.
- Use it as the baseline that savings will be checked against.
- Start now: it doesn’t need anyone’s permission.
Consequently
- You get most of the visibility of chargeback without the restructuring. Nobody splits a VPC to change a number they don’t pay.
- Finance gets evidence it can check a saving against.
- It rations nothing, and a report that nobody pays for is easy to ignore.
- It’s often the first step toward chargeback, so the design of what comes next still matters.
Seen In
Chapter 17, “Showback” (no section anchor yet); Chapter 17, table “Ways to fund a shared platform, and what each one tends to do”; Chapter 16, “Make the Numbers Survive Being Checked”.