Every cost-aware cloud engineer I know has felt the pressure—too many tasks, too little time, and a constant tug-of-war between keeping things running smoothly and cutting unnecessary costs. I’ve been there myself, staring at a dashboard filled with numbers, unsure which fire to put out first. It’s frustrating, but I’ve learned that trying to do everything at once only leads to wasted effort.
That’s where prioritization comes in. Without it, you’ll spend your time fixing small inefficiencies while the real cost drivers go unnoticed. Over the years, I’ve seen how shifting from reactive decision-making to a structured approach can completely change how engineers tackle cloud costs.
I also recently had a conversation with Harry Max on the "Always an Engineer" podcast that reinforced this idea. He shared some practical techniques that engineers—myself included—can use to cut through the noise, and focus on what really moves the needle. Let’s break it down.
Harry Max is a seasoned leader with deep expertise in decision-making, prioritization, and organizational effectiveness. His insights into how self-deception and analysis paralysis can hinder progress are invaluable for engineers—and anyone looking to sharpen their focus and make better decisions.
For a deeper dive into prioritization strategies, check out Harry’s book, Managing Priorities: How to Create Smarter, Faster, and Better Decisions, available on Amazon.
Connect with Harry on LinkedIn to learn more about his leadership strategies and insights.
What We're Covering
- The Power of Prioritization: A Lesson from Harry Max
- Applying Prioritization to Cloud Cost Management
- Embedding Prioritization into Engineering Workflows
- Bringing It All Together
The Power of Prioritization: A Lesson from Harry Max
Prioritization is about more than managing your time—it’s about choosing what truly deserves your attention and acting on it. According to Harry Max, one of the biggest blockers to effective prioritization is self-deception. We often tell ourselves stories about why we can’t focus on what truly matters.
Harry's framework for overcoming this challenge is a morning boot routine, which consists of three simple but powerful steps:
- Identify Avoidances: What are you avoiding that needs attention? Tackling hidden inefficiencies early prevents them from becoming costly problems.
- Focus on Strategic Wins: What action today will have the biggest long-term impact? Small, consistent efforts on strategic initiatives lead to lasting improvements.
- Tackle the Urgent: What needs immediate resolution? Addressing critical overages or anomalies early can prevent cascading failures.
I tried implementing this in my own routine. One morning, I finally tackled an issue I had been putting off for weeks—cleaning out my overstuffed inbox. It had gotten so out of hand that I was missing important emails and feeling overwhelmed every time I opened it. It took just an hour to sort, archive, and set up better filters, but the sense of relief and regained control was immediate. Addressing it early instead of letting it pile up even more made all the difference.
Applying Prioritization to Cloud Cost Management
Now, let’s put these prioritization skills into practice with cloud cost optimization. Here are some specific ways engineers can apply prioritization to cloud operations:
1. Identify Avoidances: Find Hidden Inefficiencies
Many organizations ignore low-hanging fruit that could drive cost savings. I remember working with a team that found an entire cluster running workloads that had been abandoned after a project ended. No one had thought to check, and it had been burning thousands of dollars monthly. A simple audit saved them over $50,000 per year. Engineers should actively look for:
- Idle Resources: Identify compute instances running with no active workloads. Automated reports can surface underutilized instances for decommissioning.
- Over-Provisioned Instances: Rightsize instances based on historical utilization trends.
- Untagged Assets: Cloud cost visibility depends on proper tagging. Build a habit of enforcing tagging policies to avoid waste.
- Zombie Infrastructure: Old test environments or abandoned projects can silently rack up costs. Regularly audit and shut down anything that’s no longer needed.
2. Focus on Strategic Wins: Optimize for Maximum Impact
One of our first customers reduced their company’s storage costs by 40% simply by enabling lifecycle policies for log files. It was an easy change but required someone to prioritize the task. Some cost optimizations have an outsized impact on both savings and performance:
- Commitment-Based Discounts: Evaluate Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans to maximize long-term savings.
- Efficient Storage Strategies: Use lifecycle policies to move infrequently accessed data to lower-cost storage tiers (e.g., from S3 Standard to S3 Glacier).
- Kubernetes Resource Optimization: Fine-tune cluster scaling settings to minimize waste while ensuring performance.
- Spot Instances: Use spot instances for non-critical workloads to take advantage of significant cost savings while maintaining reliability.
3. Tackle the Urgent: Prevent Budget Overruns
An engineer at one of our customers ignored an alert about a spike in cloud costs, assuming it was a temporary fluctuation. By the time they investigated, they had already overspent by $20,000. That experience drove home the importance of responding to alerts as soon as they appear. Some cost challenges demand immediate attention:
- Anomaly Detection Alerts: Implement real-time alerts for unexpected spikes in cloud spend to prevent runaway costs.
- Unused Load Balancers and IPs: Identify and decommission resources that accrue unnecessary costs.
- Misaligned Workloads: Ensure workloads are running in the most cost-efficient regions based on pricing variations.
- Capacity Planning Gaps: Regularly assess demand forecasts to prevent last-minute overprovisioning and unplanned expenses.
At Yotascale, we’ve helped teams implement these techniques, resulting in improved system efficiency and significant cost reductions.
Embedding Prioritization into Engineering Workflows
Prioritization should become a habit, not an afterthought. Here are some ways to integrate prioritization into daily cloud cost management:
- Weekly Cost Reviews: Engineers should dedicate time each week to reviewing cloud spend and identifying optimization opportunities.
- Real-Time Dashboards: Use tools that provide a clear view of key cost metrics and utilization trends.
- Automated Guardrails: Implement governance policies that automatically enforce best practices (e.g., auto-shutdown for unused development environments).
- Cross-Team Collaboration: Encourage cost awareness by making cloud spend a shared responsibility between engineering, finance, and leadership.
- Blameless Postmortems: Review past cost overruns and discuss improvements openly to avoid repeating mistakes.
By building these habits, teams can prevent cost inefficiencies from creeping in and stay ahead of budget concerns.
Bringing It All Together
Cloud cost optimization isn’t about doing everything—it’s about focusing on what delivers the most value. By adopting prioritization as a core skill, engineers can:
- Proactively manage cloud resources instead of reacting to surprises.
- Make confident, data-driven cost decisions.
- Align engineering efforts with business impact.
Whether you’re managing costs for a small team or a large enterprise, prioritization is your key to success. At Yotascale, we’re here to help you stay focused, make smarter decisions, and unlock the full potential of your cloud investments.
