Deploying Power Apps? 5 Tips for Building the Team and Processes.

Recent figures from Microsoft show more than 175,000 organisations are using Power Platform with approximately 50,000 new apps and projects created each month. Figures show that this adoption is accelerating with use of the platform doubling in the last year. We have seen first-hand this exponential growth in the use of Power Platform, especially in the areas of Power Apps and Power Automate. But with many organisations expanding the use of development and bespoke applications, good governance has become a hot topic.

?Good governance is an essential element for successful technology projects and is especially important in the development and implementation of Microsoft Power Apps. Governance helps to ensure that decisions made about the development, deployment, and maintenance of Power Apps, are properly evaluated and monitored for effectiveness. Applied stringently, good governance helps to ensure that the applications are easy to use, secure and provide a consistent user experience. It also helps to ensure that only effective changes are made in production, with oversight from the responsible stakeholders and can be rolled back if needed.?

?These are achieved in part by making sure that there are clear processes and efficient control systems to ensure the smooth development and running of the applications, while keeping risk and cost to a minimum. It also helps to ensure that the application is compliant with any regulations and industry standards. Good governance sets a clear direction for the development and deployment of the Power App and ensures that the stakeholders have the tools and resources to achieve their objectives. Finally, good governance ensures that any issues or discrepancies can be quickly addressed and rectified.

?To assist with developing good practices in the governance of Microsoft Power Apps development and operations here are five important points to consider.?

?1. Establish clear roles, responsibilities, and communication cadence for stakeholders, including decision-makers, developers, testers, and end users. This should be created for both the operational and project teams. ?A useful model, used to great success in both application and automation development is the Centre of Excellence. There are many resources to help with creating a clear and documented model that will be effective in the context of your organisation’s resources, requirements, and objectives.

?2. Establish a secure system with stringent access control policies. These provide guidelines and standards that control access to resources within an application. Policies should include restrictive roles or access levels, such as read-only, read/write, and administrative-level access. Policies should define user authentication processes, password strength requirements, encryption methods, and other methods for protecting confidential data as well as incorporating security best practices.

?3. Define and communicate clear development procedures and standards that include code reviews and other measures to ensure quality and prevent errors. This can help to ensure that the finished product is of a high quality and help to reduce the amount of time and resources wasted on repairing bugs and errors within the application. Using development standards can also save time and money on resources. The standards help developers to focus their efforts, eliminating time wasted on unnecessary features or code that doesn’t fit the set criteria and requirements.

?4. Stay updated on security trends and threats and ensure the application is regularly tested to ensure safety and privacy. Regular reviews, updates and testing helps to ensure that a secure environment exists throughout the development process and operational use. Clear and current security procedures that are integrated into the development and operational processes help to make sure that any application built pr updated, is secure against potential threats. This is especially important in industries that deal with sensitive data.

?5. Monitor and audit usage of the applications to ensure compliance with applicable regulations as well as making sure that the required value is being achieved by the application users and organisation. Not only does recording application access and use provide essential support in achieving compliance, there is also a lot of potential business value in understanding more on how applications are used and what data is accessed.

?There can be a lot of effort in establishing governance procedures for developing and operating applications in the Microsoft Power Platform, but once in place this enables rapid cost-effective scaling of applications across both users and organisational functions. The benefits to be achieved can far outweigh the initial investment required, streamlining processes that release staff time efficiently and greatly increase productivity.?

?Power Apps have rapidly become a key part of automation to enable human interaction with data and the automated processes themselves. Automation Outcomes has formed a close partnership with Microsoft Power Platform Specialist Digpacks, we now have a shared management and development team spanning two regional offices. Digpacks has many years’ experience helping organisations not only implement Microsoft Power Apps and automation, but also assisting and enabling internal development, operations, and scale. Get in touch if you would like to find out more and learn how the Automation Outcomes and Digpacks teams can enable your application and automation journey.?