Gamifying FinOps: Creative Strategies to Motivate Engineers and Reduce Cloud Costs

Getting engineers to actively manage and optimize cloud spending can feel like an ongoing challenge for many companies. In fact, consistently controlling cloud costs is recognized as one of the top financial hurdles for modern organizations.

The good news is that companies can turn this challenge into an engaging experience by gamifying FinOps practices. By making cost optimization interactive and rewarding, engineers are more likely to learn, participate, and contribute to reducing cloud expenses. Below are some real-world examples of how organizations have successfully used gamification to drive FinOps adoption.

Fidelity’s Try FinOps Tournament

Awareness is often the first step toward meaningful action. At Fidelity, the FinOps team introduced the “Try FinOps Tournament” to encourage employees to explore FinOps principles firsthand.

The tournament featured eleven challenge “rooms,” each focusing on a specific aspect of FinOps, including:

• FinOps 101
• Identifying areas for cost reduction
• Understanding FinOps KPIs

Participants worked through the rooms and completed a quiz to test their understanding. The results were impressive. Over 50 percent of participants, out of 1,400 employees, completed the tournament. Many of these participants continued to attend FinOps discussions and contributed ideas for improving cloud cost efficiency.

FinOps Bingo

Another company experimented with a simple yet effective approach: FinOps Bingo. Employees were given bingo cards containing sixteen activities divided into three categories:

• Learning about FinOps
• Identifying ways to save money
• Reporting results proactively

Teams competed to complete their cards, and prizes were awarded to the top performers. Nine out of fourteen teams completed their cards fully, demonstrating that even straightforward games can generate strong engagement and encourage financial mindfulness.

General Mills’ Points and Prize Rewards

General Mills implemented a points-based recognition system to reward FinOps achievements. Each month, the team selected a “FinOps Allstar” or a small group of employees who excelled at cost optimization.

Rewards included:

• Public recognition
• Branded merchandise such as Yeti mugs
• Internal points redeemable for company catalog items

Before this initiative, only one team actively prioritized FinOps. Afterward, interest grew across twenty teams, showing the power of recognition and tangible rewards in driving engagement.

GitLab’s Cost Savings Contest

GitLab leveraged healthy competition to inspire cost-saving initiatives. They launched a contest with visible team rankings to see which group could achieve the highest cloud cost reductions.

The results were significant:

• Teams actively pursued cost optimization goals
• Engineers collaborated to support struggling teams
• Kubernetes costs were reduced by 10 percent by the contest’s end

This example highlights how competition can motivate engineers while fostering teamwork and knowledge sharing.

A Gaming Company’s Cost Challenge Series

Game development companies have a unique advantage when it comes to gamification, and one organization used it to optimize cloud costs. They designed a series of challenges focused on:

• Reducing unnecessary expenses
• Improving cost allocation
• Maintaining financial transparency

These challenges encouraged cross-team collaboration and ensured that employees remained focused on both efficiency and responsible cloud spending.

Begin Your FinOps Journey with Opslyft

Mastering FinOps is a step-by-step process. At Opslyft, we help companies gain control of their cloud spending and gradually build expertise in cost management.

Our platform delivers actionable data and insights to guide FinOps decisions, helping teams identify areas for optimization and measure results. By combining advanced tools with expert guidance, Opslyft enables organizations to make informed decisions and embed cost-conscious practices throughout their engineering teams.

Optimizing cloud costs does not have to be a struggle. With the right approach, gamification can turn FinOps into an engaging, collaborative, and rewarding practice that benefits both employees and the company’s bottom line.