# The hidden governance gap in cloud In the move to the cloud, decision-making has quietly shifted. Most of the power now sits with engineers — DevOps, developers, architects. They’re the ones who decide which tools get used, what services get adopted, and how fast things move. From a technical perspective, that makes sense. We don’t hire engineers to be accountants or corporate strategists. We hire them to build. But here’s the problem: in the process, **finance and executives lost their voice**. The CFO doesn’t get to set cost guardrails in real time. The CEO doesn’t see their strategic intent translated into system constraints. And developers? They end up carrying stress they shouldn’t have to — constantly second-guessing the cost impact of their technical choices. That’s not healthy. And it’s not sustainable. --- ## Three kinds of trade-offs When you zoom out, every organization is constantly balancing **three kinds of trade-offs**: 1. **Strategic trade-offs** → Executives decide: where are we heading, what risks do we accept, what principles guide us? 2. **Financial trade-offs** → Finance sets: what’s the budget, where do we draw the line, how do we allocate spend? 3. **Technical trade-offs** → Engineers manage: performance vs. cost, resilience vs. complexity, the real-world implementation. Each of these needs to be expressed, documented, and **respected**. Not verbally. Not in a slide deck. In a way that is **enforceable, contextual, and adaptable.** --- ## Why policies are the missing link That’s where **policies** come in. Policies are the bridge between intent and reality. They let each persona express constraints in their own language, then make sure those constraints flow down into the actual cloud environment. - The CEO’s “we need to expand to Europe this quarter” becomes a deployment policy for region selection. - The CFO’s “this project can’t spend more than $50K” becomes a budget guardrail. - The architect’s “everything must be encrypted at rest” becomes a compliance policy. Instead of being an afterthought, policies make these agreements **real, auditable, and enforceable.** --- ## Why I like Stacklet I’ve looked at a lot of tools in this space. Stacklet stands out because it doesn’t just treat policies as governance _handcuffs_. It treats them as **first-class citizens of cloud operations.** With Stacklet, policies aren’t just rules that block. They’re also a way to **empower teams**: - Developers get clarity and freedom: “If it passes the policy, I can move forward.” - Finance gets visibility: “I know spend won’t go outside these boundaries.” - Executives get confidence: “Our strategy is baked into the system, not sitting in a memo.” That’s why I’m working with them. Not because policies are a buzzword, but because they’re the most practical way to align business intent with technical execution. --- ## The bottom line The cloud is amazing. But it shifted power in ways most companies didn’t anticipate. Engineers shouldn’t be financial strategists. CFOs shouldn’t decide instance types. CIOs shouldn’t chase people about tags. Policies are how you bring everyone back into balance. They let executives set strategy, finance set boundaries, engineers build freely — and automation enforces the agreements. It’s not about taking power away from DevOps. It’s about **giving power back to everyone else.** Thanks again to Stacklet for the support and for building something that makes this vision possible.