Foundations for Growth - The Power Platform Centre of Excellence
Storm's Modern Applications Practice Director, John Tallon, shares his insight into how your organisation can maximise ROI and build the foundations for success with a Power Platform Centre of Excellence.
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Enabling your staff to build their own low-cost, low-code apps through the Microsoft Power Platform sounds like nirvana to many business owners - and anarchy to others.
While there are clear benefits in getting your staff to improve their own workflows and processes, it is natural to have some concerns that key elements such as data security could be compromised.
Duplication of effort or misalignment around what needs to be improved upon could also become an issue, particularly with remote working and international operations.
Power Platform Centre of Excellence
We believe the key to ensuring the success of low-code/no-code apps is to build a Power Platform Centre of Excellence (CoE) within your organisation to provide the right tools, training and support for maximum productivity.
Tools that enable your CoE members to monitor, govern, and nurture the apps build using the Power Platform.
To help you get started on your journey, Microsoft has released a CoE Starter Kit, enabling you to nurture the Power Platform and its enthusiasts, while putting measures in place to remain compliant and safeguard sensitive business data without putting so much regulation in place that it blocks creativity.
After all, no one wants to see their confidential business data being Tweeted out by mistake...
Clear methodology
A CoE sets out the tools, methodology and mindset in these areas:
Governance tools for the IT Department so they can see who is creating the apps, the connections and what data is being accessed.
Monitoring tools to see how the apps are being used, what locations, adoption across departments or locations and understanding if they can be expanded to other areas of the business.
Support nurturing the apps to success. There can be challenges with enthusiasts across the company building different apps, coming with new ideas and releasing new versions. This can lead to a backlog of enhancements and new requirements which can become a bigger issue in multi-national and multi-site organisations than smaller companies. For example, there may be someone in Brazil collaborating with other staff in Singapore or Dublin and they may need help to bring our a cohesive and effective app.
Best Practices
The Microsoft CoE Starter Kit is a collection of templatized best practices that are designed to help businesses get started with the tools they need to set up a CoE, focusing on administration, governance and nurture functions.
Using the Starter Kit makes it easy to get started and doesn't take long to set up. However, many organisations find it helpful to have a third-party specialist such as Storm on their CoE team as a regular consultant to provide ongoing guidance and advice.
A fast-moving and frequently updated area of Microsoft's software development, this external perspective ensures you receive expert advice and guidance on the best ways to develop and expand new apps as the software evolves.
To find out more on the Centre of Excellence, check out our on-demand webinar "Adapt & Grow with Power Platform"
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