Power Platform Governance and Administration (Governance, Center of Excellence)

Jacek Szafader February 13, 2024

We’ve all recently become enamored with the Power Platform and its apps, Power BI reports, Power Automate, and its flows. These are superb tools used by ordinary, non-technical people in their daily work. Some of these tools come with the simplest Microsoft 365 licenses, while others require premium Power Platform licenses. Those more capable, who want more time for kitchen gossip (office version) or for laundry and cooking (remote work version), and those minimally savvy, all dive into the possibilities and start creating apps, approval processes, reports.

Great. People are capable, technology becomes simple. Work gets done faster, and we have more time for ourselves. Decision-makers are pleased because they finally notice the effects of digital transformation and all investments – be it in licenses or training.

Only this poor environment and this tenancy are becoming increasingly burdensome and bloated. Many side effects arise, such as the lack of a report that has become crucial because no one associated it with personnel movements and the absence of the creator for a month in the organization. Data, often sensitive, aggregated and essentially confidential, flies around SharePoint lists and dataverses, and no one is sure who has access to it. Problem-solving becomes difficult because it’s even hard to find the right one among hundreds of flows in the list, which, for example, crashes. We’ve undergone digital transformation, but now it’s showing us its second, demonic face. It was very easy to control what people keep in their desks, what documents they have; it was easy to check how they received them and how they used them. When this data is in digital form, reigning over it all is completely different and requires a completely different approach.

We don’t know how many apps we have, who uses them, and who has access to them, who updates them and breaks their functionality. We don’t know if data leaks occur, and if so, how. We don’t know which of our citizen developers digitizes which processes and which databases. We don’t know who creates what reports in Power BI and who they are shared with. We don’t know if the people who begged us for premium licenses, which we pay for every month, are still using them, or if they have abandoned their projects or multiplied entities that saturate our resources. We absolutely don’t know what will remain when a talented maker (a person creating according to Microsoft’s terminology) leaves the organization, and we deactivate their account.

To help manage all of this, the Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence (CoE) comes into play. The CoE enables methodical and organized provision of tools and their unlimited capabilities to our employees, while introducing standards and control (Power Platform Governance).

We are not stifling innovation, extinguishing enthusiasm, or stifling creativity, but rather introducing rules. We know who, we know how much, we know how. We have reports on issues, enigmas. We don’t have chaos and uncertainty.

Why consider implementing a CoE:

Scalability and Consistency: CoE enables consistent deployment and management of Power Platform solutions. It allows for organized scaling of projects and ensures consistency in application development, process automation, and data analysis.
Cross-Department Collaboration: IT, business, and administration departments have different perspectives. Implementing CoE allows for joint development of best practices, standards, and policies to increase efficiency and avoid redundancy.
Application Lifecycle Management: CoE helps monitor, maintain, and update Power Platform applications. It’s important that solutions comply with security requirements and are adaptable to changing business needs.
Supporting Solution Makers: CoE provides support for individuals creating applications and automations. It offers training, documentation, and best practices to enhance user skills.
Cost Management: CoE helps avoid excessive creation of applications and automations, which can lead to inefficient resource utilization. It allows identification of unused or abandoned solutions.
Monitoring and Optimization: CoE tracks application performance, analyzes data, and provides feedback. This enables continuous improvement of solutions.
Control and Security: It allows control over which applications and automations are created within the Power Platform. This ensures data security and compliance with regulations, such as GDPR if data falls under its purview.
License and Capacity Management: It includes planning and managing licenses and available capacity within the Power Platform, which is crucial in terms of license costs or additional usage fees.

Atteli not only supports its clients in building Power Platform applications but also develops Power Platform management plans. We conduct audits, create policies aligned with company goals and guidelines, manage environments on an ongoing basis, and provide reporting if the company lacks its own competencies in this area.

Power Platform Governance and Administration (Governance, Center of Excellence)

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