Power Platform governance
Powerful low-code tools allow anyone to become a developer. Yet not everyone can become an IT administrator with full rights to your organization's business data and apps. How will you ensure that there's a balance between creative powers and administrative responsibilities?
The journey to low-code adoption requires platform governance processes
The typical starting point for Power Platform technology usage within the organization is through experimentation by individual users and teams. Rarely do we see the initial apps and automations being built as a result of centralized planning from IT and top management. Low-code growth most often starts organically.
As the organization becomes more broadly aware of tools like Power Apps and Power Automate being already leveraged as part of many business processes, this can raise some concerns: who is actually managing all these solutions? Where did they come from, who is using them, what data is stored & where, is anyone maintaining them?
Unlike traditional IT systems that are implemented through top-down planning and assignment of resposibilities (budget, delivery project, support etc.), low-code systems may simply emerge as byproducts of the business operations. They can deliver value at amazing speed, thanks to this "doing instead of planning" mentality. To become a sustainable part of the business information infrastructure, though, planning and coordination will be required sooner or later.
With so many potential makers for apps and automations, successfully managing your organization's Power Platform solutions requires a unique approach. It's not about dealing with IT vendors and software developers - even though they are often a part of the picture. You need to establish a low-code platform governance model that adapts to all the different maker personas, as well as solutions ranging from personal productivity apps to business critical line-of-business systems.
What is low-code platform governance all about?
Setting up guardrails for the low-code platform and enabling its use in business context, without sacrificing its potential, user experience, or app maker ability to innovate with it.
Do you know who is building what, where and why?
The fundamental challenge that most newly appointed owners or administrators of Microsoft Power Platform technology in an organization will face is lack of visibility. In practice there is always existing usage of these tools that have been available in the Microsoft 365 tenant for many years already.
Now you need to identify the apps and automations that require attention. Maybe the app makers have left, maybe the solution has broken down, maybe there is critical business data processed in uncompliant ways, maybe licensing requirements have been ignored. Where do you start?
The lack of established Power Platform governance practices can quickly accumulate technical debt and start to cause disruption to the business. It is therefore crucial to use the available analysis tools to assess the situation and build a governance backlog to prioritize the tasks - so that the fires already burning can be quickly identified and dealt with.
Our services for Power Platform governance
Based on our engagements with various types of organizations looking to take true ownership of their low-code tools, we have developed the Forward Forever service offering for Power Platform governance needs. Our aim as Power Platform advisors is to ensure our customers have a solid foundation in place, from both technical configuration as well as competence perspective. We do this by following these three steps in our governance related customer engagements:
Read our governance blog posts
Dive deeper into the topics that we've encountered when helping our customers plan and operate their low-code platform governance processes and tools.
