# Cost Governance and Decision-Making - Patterns | Patterns

Source: https://architect.salesforce.com/docs/architect/well-architected/guide/resource-and-cost-optimization-governance-patterns.html

> Proven patterns for cost monitoring, governance, build vs buy decisions, and sandbox strategy aligned to the Well-Architected Resource and Cost Optimization pillar.

# Cost Governance and Decision-Making - Patterns

Learn more about Well-Architected [Resource and Cost Optimization](https://architect.salesforce.com/docs/architect/well-architected/guide/resource-and-cost-optimization.html) → [Cost Monitoring and Governance](https://architect.salesforce.com/docs/architect/well-architected/guide/resource-and-cost-optimization.html#cost-monitoring-and-governance)

**Patterns**

Where to look

What good looks like

**Setup** → Company Settings → System Overview  
**Reports & Dashboards** → Cost Utilization Folder

✅ **Pattern**: Create executive dashboard showing $2.1M annual Salesforce investment distributed across 1,200 licenses (68% active weekly), 450 GB storage (72% capacity), and 15 sandboxes (11 actively used)  
✅ Dashboard reveals $400K optimization opportunity in inactive licenses and unused sandboxes through operational metrics

**Reports & Dashboards** → Investment Dashboard  
**Setup** → Company Information

✅ **Pattern**: Investment dashboards show spending by business unit or cost center, sandbox and environment costs by development team, add-on product costs with utilization metrics  
✅ Project spending based on current growth trends enabling budget accountability and allocation discussions

**Anti-Patterns**

Where to look

What bad looks like

**Accounting System** → Invoice Records Only

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Finance team has invoice visibility showing total spending but no operational metrics revealing utilization patterns or optimization opportunities  
⚠️ Cannot identify inactive licenses, unused sandboxes, or capacity waste without operational dashboards

**Patterns**

Where to look

What good looks like

**Reports & Dashboards** → License Budget Alerts  
**Setup** → License Allocations

✅ **Pattern**: License budgets establish allocation targets by department with alerts when approaching capacity  
✅ Prevent uncontrolled provisioning creating budget overruns discovered only at renewal time through proactive monitoring

**Setup** → Storage Usage → Alert Rules  
**Flow** → Storage Warning Automation

✅ **Pattern**: Automated alert triggers at 70% storage utilization providing 4-month lead time to implement archival strategy before hitting limits  
✅ Prevents emergency data deletion or expensive overage charges through proactive notification with adequate response time

**System Overview** → API Usage Alerts  
**Event Monitoring** → API Threshold Warnings

✅ **Pattern**: API budgets track consumption against limits with alerts at example utilization thresholds such as 70% and 85%  
✅ Enable proactive optimization rather than reactive emergency responses after limits cause integration failures or user disruption

**Setup** → Sandbox Management → Budget Controls  
**Flow** → Sandbox Request Approval

✅ **Pattern**: Sandbox budgets control environment proliferation through allocation limits and approval processes for additional environments  
✅ Prevent teams from creating unlimited temporary environments that transition to permanent status without justification

**Anti-Patterns**

Where to look

What bad looks like

**No Budget Controls** → Uncontrolled Spending

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: No license budgets or approval workflows allowing unlimited provisioning across departments without visibility to spending patterns  
⚠️ Budget overruns discovered at renewal when aggregate spending exceeds planned investment by 30-40% due to uncontrolled growth

**No Storage Alerts** → Reactive Overages

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Storage overage discovered during renewal negotiation requiring immediate purchase at premium pricing without time for archival evaluation  
⚠️ Missing advance warning that would enable archival implementation before overages occur, resulting in 2-3x higher costs

**Patterns**

Where to look

What good looks like

**Reports & Dashboards** → Showback Report  
**Reports** → Cost by Business Unit

✅ **Pattern**: Quarterly showback report shows Sales Cloud consuming 45% of license investment, Service Cloud 30%, and Operations 25%  
✅ Enables executive discussion about whether investment distribution aligns with business value priorities and strategic focus areas

**Financial System** → Chargeback Allocation  
**Reports** → Department Cost Allocation

✅ **Pattern**: Allocation rules distribute costs appropriately: license costs by user department assignment, sandbox costs by owning development team  
✅ Integration costs allocated by business process consuming integration services, development costs by requesting project funding source

**Reports & Dashboards** → Sandbox Cost Report  
**Setup** → Sandbox Usage by Team

✅ **Pattern**: Sandbox and environment costs allocated by owning development team creating direct accountability for environment management  
✅ Teams see their sandbox investment enabling informed decisions about environment requests and lifecycle management

**Anti-Patterns**

Where to look

What bad looks like

**IT Budget Only** → No Business Unit Visibility

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: All Salesforce costs allocated to IT budget without business unit visibility  
⚠️ Business stakeholders treat platform as “free” and make requests without cost awareness or investment prioritization discussions

**No Usage Attribution** → Cannot Optimize

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Total spending visible but no attribution to business units, projects, or teams making optimization decisions impossible  
⚠️ Cannot identify which investments deliver value and which consume budget without proportional returns

**Patterns**

Where to look

What good looks like

**Collaboration** → FinOps Team  
**Meetings** → Monthly Cost Review

✅ **Pattern**: Cross-functional collaboration between finance, architecture, and business stakeholders ensures cost decisions consider business value alongside spending impact  
✅ FinOps brings finance expertise to architecture discussions and technical understanding to budget planning creating balanced decisions

**Calendar** → Optimization Reviews  
**Process** → Regular Cadence

✅ **Pattern**: Continuous optimization cadence with monthly anomaly review, quarterly utilization audit, and annual comprehensive TCO assessment  
✅ Regular review cycles prevent cost drift and validate that spending growth corresponds to business value growth through systematic analysis

**Tools** → License Cost Calculator  
**Architecture** → TCO Models

✅ **Pattern**: FinOps team provides architects with license cost calculator showing TCO implications of different license type selections  
✅ Enables cost-aware design decisions during architecture phase rather than discovering costs after deployment when changes are expensive

**Training** → Cost Awareness Program  
**Documentation** → Cost Impact Guidelines

✅ **Pattern**: Cost awareness education ensures teams understand how architectural decisions affect total cost of ownership  
✅ Architects design better solutions balancing capability and investment; developers write more efficient automation respecting governor limits and API consumption

**Automation** → Cost Monitoring Scripts  
**Dashboards** → Auto-Generated Reports

✅ **Pattern**: Automated monitoring of utilization, optimization opportunities, and spending reports reduces manual effort  
✅ Scales with organizational complexity without linear headcount growth, enabling cost awareness across growing platform footprint

**Anti-Patterns**

Where to look

What bad looks like

**Annual Only** → No Feedback Loop

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Cost visibility limited to annual renewal discussions providing no feedback loop  
⚠️ Architecture teams cannot understand or optimize spending patterns during design phase when changes are least expensive

**Siloed Decisions** → No Cross-Functional Input

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Architecture decisions made without finance input, budget decisions made without technical understanding  
⚠️ Results in solutions that exceed budget without business justification or budget cuts that eliminate capabilities delivering critical value

**No Cost Education** → Uninformed Decisions

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Teams make architectural decisions without understanding cost implications because no training or visibility exists  
⚠️ Accumulates waste through thousands of micro-decisions that individually seem minor but compound to significant spending

**Patterns**

Where to look

What good looks like

**Documentation** → Architecture Decision Record  
**Process** → ADR Template

✅ **Pattern**: Architecture Decision Record for customer portal includes license analysis: 10,000 external users with Customer Community Plus licenses ($6 per user monthly = $720K annually)  
✅ Compares versus custom web application with API integration ($250K initial + $50K annual maintenance), recommending custom application with 2-year payback

**Governance** → Architecture Review Board  
**Process** → Cost Review Criteria

✅ **Pattern**: Architecture Review Board includes cost perspective alongside functional and non-functional requirements producing better-aligned investment decisions  
✅ Cost is one input to architectural decisions ensuring organizations invest appropriately in capabilities that matter while avoiding waste

**Documentation** → ADR Cost Section  
**Templates** → TCO Projection

✅ **Pattern**: Include cost impact assessment in Architecture Decision Records documenting major design choices  
✅ Require TCO projection for solutions exceeding defined investment thresholds ($100K or organizational policy) with documented assumptions

**Process** → License Impact Review  
**Architecture** → Premium Feature Analysis

✅ **Pattern**: Evaluate license implications during solution design determining whether design requires premium licenses or add-ons  
✅ Assess integration cost implications before committing to patterns affecting API consumption or middleware licensing requirements

**Anti-Patterns**

Where to look

What bad looks like

**No Cost Consideration** → Emergency Redesign

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Architecture designed without cost consideration, discovering at implementation planning that proposed approach requires $720K annual investment  
⚠️ Causes emergency redesign under time pressure with inferior outcomes compared to cost-aware design from start

**Post-Design Cost Discovery** → Wasted Effort

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Architecture complete before cost analysis revealing approach exceeds budget by 3x  
⚠️ Wasted design effort and delayed delivery while team redesigns within budget constraints that were known from project start

**Patterns**

Where to look

What good looks like

**AppExchange** → Solution Evaluation  
**Analysis** → TCO Comparison

✅ **Pattern**: Document generation solution evaluation: AppExchange option at $15 per user monthly ($18K annually for 100 users) versus custom development at $80K initial build + $15K annual maintenance  
✅ AppExchange breaks even in 5 years with faster deployment and lower risk for commodity capability

**AppExchange** → Strategic vs Commodity  
**Architecture** → Capability Classification

✅ **Pattern**: Commodity capabilities (document generation, e-signature, address enrichment) purchased from AppExchange where solutions are mature with strong reviews  
✅ Proprietary pricing algorithm providing competitive advantage built custom with full control over roadmap and differentiation

**Spreadsheet** → 3-5 Year TCO Model  
**Analysis** → Cost Projection

✅ **Pattern**: Build TCO models projecting 3-5 year total costs revealing complete investment picture beyond initial expenses  
✅ AppExchange carries compounding annual subscription but includes maintenance; custom requires one-time development plus 15-20% annual maintenance

**Integration Analysis** → Custom vs Platform  
**TCO** → Integration Comparison

✅ **Pattern**: Custom integration development: $150K initial build + $30K annual maintenance + team learning curve versus MuleSoft license: $75K annual + faster integration delivery  
✅ MuleSoft provides reusable patterns across all integrations reducing per-integration cost as portfolio grows

**Documentation** → Build vs Buy ADR  
**Process** → Evaluation Framework

✅ **Pattern**: Architecture Decision Record documents build vs buy evaluation with scoring matrix weighting strategic value, TCO, timeline, capability, and exit costs  
✅ Creates audit trail for future reassessment when requirements evolve or vendor landscape changes

**Anti-Patterns**

Where to look

What bad looks like

**Always Build** → Wasted Development

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Building custom document generation solution because “we have developers available” without modeling 5-year TCO  
⚠️ AppExchange delivers better value for commodity capability; custom development wastes capacity on undifferentiated functionality

**Always Buy** → Missing Differentiation

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Purchasing all capabilities from AppExchange including strategic differentiators because “faster to deploy”  
⚠️ Competitors using same AppExchange solutions gain same capabilities eliminating competitive advantage from platform investment

**Single Meeting Decision** → No Analysis

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Build vs buy decision made in single meeting based on initial cost comparison without systematic evaluation or documentation  
⚠️ Missing strategic value assessment, TCO projection, timeline requirements, capability evaluation, and exit cost analysis

**Incomplete Cost Model** → Hidden Costs

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Building custom integration because “we already have developers” without modeling 5-year maintenance burden  
⚠️ Maintenance typically consumes 15-20% of initial development cost annually plus platform compatibility effort not visible in initial decision

**Patterns**

Where to look

What good looks like

**Process** → Strategic Value Assessment  
**Analysis** → Differentiation Matrix

✅ **Pattern**: Systematize build vs buy decisions through consistent evaluation preventing ad-hoc decisions based on incomplete analysis  
✅ Assess strategic value first: core competitive differentiators warrant custom investment; commodity capabilities favor purchasing proven solutions at lower total cost

**AppExchange** → Solution Maturity Review  
**Analysis** → Vendor Stability Check

✅ **Pattern**: Evaluate available AppExchange options reviewing solution maturity, customer ratings, ISV stability, feature alignment, and pricing models  
✅ Immature solutions with few customers carry higher risk; prioritize proven solutions with strong reviews and stable vendor financials

**Spreadsheet** → Sensitivity Analysis  
**TCO** → Assumption Documentation

✅ **Pattern**: Model 3-5 year TCO for viable options including all cost categories: licenses/subscriptions, implementation effort, maintenance burden, enhancement development, platform compatibility  
✅ Use spreadsheet enabling sensitivity analysis on assumptions showing how outcome changes if growth rates or utilization differs from projections

**Timeline** → Market Timing Analysis  
**Strategy** → Time-to-Value Assessment

✅ **Pattern**: Assess timeline requirements showing custom development requires months to years depending on complexity while AppExchange deploys in weeks  
✅ Market timing may drive buy decision despite higher long-term cost when competitive pressure or business opportunity requires immediate capability

**Analysis** → Exit Cost Evaluation  
**Risk** → Vendor Lock-In Assessment

✅ **Pattern**: Evaluate exit costs and vendor concentration risk asking how difficult is switching if chosen option proves inadequate  
✅ Consider vendor acquisition or discontinuation risk and solution portability if requirements change, preferring lower exit costs providing strategic flexibility

**Capability** → Honest Assessment  
**Team** → Maintenance Capacity Review

✅ **Pattern**: Consider organizational capability honestly evaluating whether custom solutions can be maintained long-term  
✅ Custom solutions require ongoing internal expertise for maintenance and evolution; organizations lacking this capability should purchase despite potentially higher cost

**Anti-Patterns**

Where to look

What bad looks like

**No Framework** → Inconsistent Decisions

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Build vs buy decisions vary by project team preferences without consistent evaluation criteria  
⚠️ Some teams always build, others always buy, creating architectural inconsistency and suboptimal total investment across platform

**Build Everything** → Undifferentiated Effort

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Building everything custom because “we want control” without distinguishing between commodity capabilities and strategic differentiators  
⚠️ Wastes development capacity on undifferentiated functionality that mature AppExchange solutions provide at lower total cost

**Initial Cost Only** → Incomplete Analysis

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Decision based solely on initial cost comparison: “AppExchange is $20K, custom build is $15K, so we’ll build”  
⚠️ Missing 3-5 year TCO showing custom solution costs $15K initial + $3K annual maintenance while AppExchange includes all maintenance in subscription

**Optimistic Capability** → Failed Maintenance

⚠️ **Anti-Pattern**: Choosing custom development assuming team can maintain solution despite no current capacity or expertise  
⚠️ Technical debt accumulates as maintenance is deferred; solution eventually becomes unmaintainable requiring expensive replacement