Companies want to eliminate cloud waste by optimizing their usage and policies. However, their current efforts are happening too late in the process. The goal of modern FinOps teams is to move toward proactive optimization — industry leaders are seeking to eliminate waste before it happens. The concept of “shifting left” borrows from application security/DevSecOps concepts, pushing the desired state earlier in the process to truly eliminate a problematic outcome. This report discusses the best shift-left practices that FinOps teams are exploring.