Start with obvious runtime waste
Dev, test, demo, and training resources often run longer than they need to. Scheduling these workloads is one of the fastest ways to reduce waste without redesigning the entire environment.
Clean up what no one owns
Unattached volumes, stale snapshots, unused IPs, and orphaned environments quietly accumulate. Ownership and tagging make the cleanup safer and easier to repeat.
Make optimization operational
Dashboards can identify waste, but teams still need implementation capacity. The best optimization plan names owners, sequences changes, and turns repeatable controls into the normal operating model.