Cost Posture
Cost Posture is a snapshot score that represents your team's overall cost health. It combines multiple signals — waste, coverage, optimisation opportunities, and compliance — into a single metric you can track over time.
What Cost Posture measures
The posture score is a value from 0 to 100, calculated from four dimensions:
| Dimension | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Waste | 30% | Unused resources, idle infrastructure, and resources running during non-business hours without schedules |
| Coverage | 25% | Percentage of eligible resources covered by Targets and Schedules |
| Optimisation | 25% | How many Recommendations have been accepted vs ignored |
| Compliance | 20% | Ratio of clean Scan findings to total findings; open Violations count |
Score interpretation
| Score | Label | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 80–100 | Excellent | Low waste, high coverage, recommendations addressed, few open violations |
| 60–79 | Good | Mostly healthy, but some areas need attention |
| 40–59 | Needs improvement | Significant waste or gaps in coverage and compliance |
| 0–39 | Poor | Substantial optimisation opportunity — review all dimensions |
How the score is calculated
Waste (30%)
Points are deducted for:
- Resources running outside business hours without an active Schedule
- Resources with zero or near-zero utilisation over the past 7 days
- Unused Elastic IPs, idle load balancers, and unattached EBS volumes
Coverage (25%)
Points are awarded for:
- Percentage of discovered resources included in at least one Target
- Percentage of non-production resources covered by active Schedules
- Percentage of spend attributed to teams via Cost Attribution
Optimisation (25%)
Points are awarded for:
- Recommendations accepted and implemented
- Points are deducted for recommendations that have been open for more than 30 days without action
Compliance (20%)
Points are awarded for:
- Low ratio of open Scan findings to total resources
- No open Critical or High severity Violations
- Points are deducted for each open Violation based on severity
Viewing your Cost Posture
Navigate to Guard > Cost Posture to see your current score and historical trend.
[SCREENSHOT: cost-posture.png -- Cost posture dashboard showing score, dimension breakdown, and trend chart]
The dashboard shows:
| Widget | Description |
|---|---|
| Overall score | Your current posture score with label (Excellent, Good, etc.) |
| Dimension breakdown | Per-dimension scores showing which areas need attention |
| Trend chart | Score over time (daily, weekly, or monthly) |
| Improvement opportunities | Top actions that would improve your score the most |
Historical trends
The trend chart tracks your posture score over time. Use it to:
- Measure progress — See the impact of your optimisation efforts
- Spot regressions — Catch score drops that indicate new waste or compliance issues
- Report to stakeholders — Share posture trends with leadership via the Executive Dashboard
Improving your score
The Cost Posture page lists the top improvement opportunities ranked by impact:
| Opportunity | Dimension | Example action |
|---|---|---|
| Schedule unmanaged resources | Waste + Coverage | Run the Onboarding Wizard to create Targets and Schedules |
| Address open Recommendations | Optimisation | Review and accept Recommendations |
| Resolve open Violations | Compliance | Remediate Violations |
| Improve tag coverage | Coverage | Tag resources and configure Cost Attribution |
| Clean up unused resources | Waste | Delete or decommission resources flagged in Scans |
Focus on the highest-impact improvements first. Addressing waste and coverage typically produces the largest score gains.