People sometimes ask some general advice for organizations wanting to leverage the Power Platform and establish a robust governance. I am writing this article to sum up what I usually say!

• Define Responsibilities with Dedicated Resources
• Be Clear on Scope and Objectives
• Start Early and Start Small
• Better Safe than Sorry
• Communicate
• Last but not least: Keep Up to Date

Define Responsibilities with Dedicated Resources

The Power Platform is a fantastic platform, but it also requires time and efforts to govern it properly. Making sure that the right people will have enough time to focus on this topic is key to success. It doesn’t need to be huge at first, but dedicated resources to establish the core governance will be helpful. The person(s) involved will need to upskill about how to create solutions and how to administrate them as well as how to govern the overall platform. This does take time.

Be Clear on Scope and Objectives

Another general advice to establish a robust Power Platform governance is to be crystal clear on your objectives. Organizations can have different goals with this platform. Some could be primarily looking for a new tool for their development teams to accelerate development cycles. Some others might be focusing on empowering the citizen developers to achieve more. Meanwhile, others might solely be interested in restricting and guaranteeing safety without encouraging their workforce to use it. The key is to know where your priorities are ensure everyone working on the topic knows them too.

Start Early and Start Small

The earlier, the better. It is harder to establish a proper governance if the platform is already used by the time you start. No one might be using it today, though it does not mean no one will be using it tomorrow. The later you will start defining the core concepts, the more you will have to clean up just to apply them.

Let’s take an example: a common thing to do to govern this platform is to restrict the connectors enabled on the default environment. You might come up with a rationale and a list of connectors to block on the default environment. But what to do if there are already hundreds of Flows and Apps using the connectors you are about to block? What would be the impact if you were to turn them off?

The earlier you start, the smaller you can start. You will likely not need complicated processes or an advanced operational model at first. Your processes and governance will evolve as the adoption grows, but keep it as much simple as possible to begin with. A good starting point is to set the relevant tenant restrictions and set up the core components of the CoE Starter Kit (each discussed in a separate post).

Better Safe than Sorry

We discuss this in more details in the post about tenant restrictions. Essentially it is easier to start with too much restrictions and open up later than the opposite. As described in the above section, every time additional restrictions are added over something which was not restricted before, some clean up might be necessary.

Besides, the platform is extensive and contains many products and functionalities. It is not always easy for organizations to estimate in advance how much resources they will need to govern everything. It also takes time to review each products and functionaities and define what should be the related governance strategy. A good approach can be to start with a reduced scope and block some of the functionalities. It is then possible to apply a demand-driven approach with regards to what requires opening up. As the adoption matures, needs for more functionalities will emerge at which point you start thinking of how to enable these functionalities in a safe and governed way.

Communicate

Although all the technical restrictions, enforcement and alerts are great and important, nothing can replace user education. Make sure they know who ca support them and understand what is expected of them. Too often we see admins pulling their hair out because end users do not use a platform as they should, but no one ever told them. Communicate with your end users and keep all your hair! And communication rarely stops are writing a policy available on an intranet, especially for large organizations. You might need to communicate a same message on multiple channels, multiple times, formulated in multiple ways, just to reach a small portion of the targeted audience.

And what shall you communicate with end users? Pretty much everything…

• Your strategic objectives (second advice of this post): this will help them understand the rationale of your decisions and activities.
• The restrictions in place and related processes: most of them should be described in some way in an article accessible to them. This will save a lot of time when they hit restrictions and ask questions about them.
• Success stories: this will help to identify potential for re-usability and inspire your community.
• Best practices and learning resources: help them understand what you expect of them and how they can take their solution and methodology to the next level.

However, your end users are not the only ones you should communicate with. As you progress in establishing a robust governance, you want to make sure to inform Security, CIOs and other governance teams. Their buy in will be key in increasing adoption, spreading success and generate value.

Last but not least: Keep Up to Date

This is the last general advice for a robust Power Platform governance. It is not always the easiest, though one of the most important point about the Power Platform Governance, and it will be easier if you have passionate people responsible for it. The platform is constantly evolving, Microsoft is constantly improving their documentation, and more and more Microsoft MVPs are constantly generating fantastic content that will help you. I also find that passing the official Microsoft certifications is a great way to add additional motivation and reward to keep learning.

Some of my favourite places to keep up to date:

• Overall guidance and inspiration
  • Power Platform Guidance: official Microsoft documentation regarding the Power Platform adoption overall, including
    • Admin and Governance best practices
      • Environment Strategy
      • DLP Policies
    • Nurture and Educate best practices
      • Power Platform Hub template
  • Power Platform Success Stories published by Microsoft: useful to identify other companies already using the platform and see some examples / potentially contact to share experience
• Upskilling
  • “In a Day” Workshops
  • Microsoft Learn
  • Various MVPs sharing content, such as Reza Dorrani, Shane Young, April Dunnam, Matthew Devaney, Lewis Baybutt, etc…
• Maintain up to date with releases
  • Release Waves: there are two major release waves each year. They present the key features that will be released as part of the wave. For isntance here is the 2023 release wave 2
  • Microsoft Employees and leaders on LinkedIn: following some of them can help you be on top of latest changes, such as Henry Jammes, Ryan Cunningham, Nick Doelman, Kristian Bubalo, Kenric Auguillard, Phil Topness, etc…