[Work_Item] Practitioner defined cost allocation

[ahullah]

Problem Statement

For more advanced cost allocation, use cases. Provider driven allocations may be insufficient or may differ across provider. For larger enterprises where standardisation is important, it is important to allow practitioners to control the allocation methodology and define their own as necessary. Supported by appropriate allocation, metrics and strategies.

Consume usage metrics and cost data for practitioner to perform cost allocations
Often uses alternative data sources outside of cost and usage
Prometheus for usage metrics
Spreadsheet for split percentages

Objective

To provide a guideline in the form of supporting content for all potential data sources, potentially a reference data architecture to achieve the desired practitioner driven allocation strategies in a consistent way. Including third-party logging systems such as Prometheus or other metric sources to support effective cost allocation.

Supporting Documentation

Content follow the expect to support a variety of allocation processes consistent with other methodologies in this space. E.g.. technology business management

Proposed Solution / Approach

Supporting content will explore other common metric data sources, how they are related to focus and reference data architecture or performing simple to advanced cost collocation across multiple providers and services

Epic or Theme Association

Provide the rational for the Epic or Theme.

Stakeholders

Provide names and roles of key stakeholders.

[jpradocueva]

Note from Maintainers' call on November 4:

Context: This subtopic is related to #72 but focuses on providing practitioners with guidance on implementing shared cost allocation independently of provider-generated data. This guidance would support practitioners in custom setups where standardized provider allocations aren’t sufficient.
Level of Effort Required: Very High — This item requires a comprehensive approach, as practitioners will need detailed instructions for calculating shared costs in various cloud environments.

[shawnalpay]

@ahullah, per our conversation in TF1 today, please add:

• Specific artifacts you would expect this exercise to generate, and the content within.
• Verbiage around how this is guidance on how to execute on shared cost allocations with FOCUS data specifically.

From there, we can hand it off over to @robmartin33 for consideration in a Working Group. To that end, and per today's discussion, we will pull this Work Item from 1.2 consideration, as the output generated by the Working Group would inform what we might add to the FOCUS spec itself. At that time, we would revisit this Work Item.

[jpradocueva]

Action Items from the TF-1 call on November 5:

• [#638] Alex @ahullah : Augment [Work_Item] Practitioner defined cost allocation #638 to clarify artifact expectations, focusing on FOCUS-specific data and outputs for practitioner allocations.
• [#638] Alex @ahullah : Document specific practitioner allocation methods in [Work_Item] Practitioner defined cost allocation #638, focusing on examples using Prometheus data and shared resource allocation.
• [#638] Team: Review additional sources that could aid in custom allocation strategies and propose a list of recommended tools and datasets for future FOCUS experimental columns.

[jpradocueva]

Comments from the Members' call on November 7:

#638: This item was excluded from the v1.2 scope, as it involves broader practitioner actions with data that goes beyond current FOCUS specifications. The group agreed to pass this issue to a separate working group to explore related data models and allocation strategies.

Action Items:

• [#638] Rob: Lead the new working group to explore allocation data models for broader practitioner use cases.