4 Tips for Delivering Successful Power Apps Projects

Microsoft Power Apps provides tools and templates that enable an environment where rapid application development is possible. It takes the responsibility of building applications off the shoulders of IT specialists and places it in the hands of citizen developers. Power Apps is an affordable low-code/no-code solution that allows non-developers in an organization to build an app that meets the business’ needs.

More recently, users have opted for Power Apps because of the numerous benefits it offers to organizations, chief of which is speed. The power of technology to enable business agility is made possible with Power Apps as organizations do not necessarily need to rely on traditional app building processes, thus enabling less complicated apps to go to market faster.

The future of app building

As a major part of the Microsoft Power Platform, Power Apps provides organizations with control over their own digital transformation. By putting the power in the hands of citizen developers, the solution opens a world of digital opportunities for organizations to maximize.

Although speed is a core benefit, Power Apps is incorporated with several other capabilities that simplify the app-building process, encourage user creativity, and improve operational efficiency. Here are some of them:

Ease of use

Usability and flexibility are two of the major advantages of Power Apps. The nature of its design makes it possible for people with minimal coding knowledge or technical background to develop applications. With an intuitive interface that allows you to drag and drop, you can speedily add buttons, text, labels, and data connectors. The solution is preloaded with other components and templates that make it easy and effortless to build on, in line with your specific business need.

Cost-effectiveness

Power Apps helps you save organizational cost in multiple ways. You can significantly cut down on your financial investment in application development by providing your in-house technical team with a basic training on how to effectively maximize the solution. You can also judiciously manage other resources such as time because feedback can be given and updates implemented faster.

Automation of internal processes

Your team’s productivity can take a notable upward turn if their tasks are automated through Power Apps. For example, the HR team leverage the solution to build a simple app that can improve the overall employee onboarding process. On this app, new hires can access important information such as company policies and processes, team member contacts, among others. Employees can also communicate on a single, unified channel, apply for leaves, seek and gain approvals, and access workplace benefits. The Procurement team can manage inventory, vendors, suppliers, assets, and logistics on an app built and customized for this purpose. Power Apps offers limitless opportunities to enhance your business operations.

Succeeding with Power Apps

Although it’s simple to use, maximizing your investment in Power Apps can require expert guidance. We have identified a few important steps that can help you successfully take full advantage of the solution.

Evaluate opportunities

Evaluating your opportunities when building with Power Apps requires two crucial steps:

• Be aware of your skill set: Understanding your team’s collective and individual abilities helps you identify what Power Apps can deliver for you. It will also help in figuring out the gaps that you need to fill.
• Evaluate your return on investment: Ask questions such as “What value will my organization gain from the opportunities that exist in Power Apps?”, “Is it worth investing in?”, “What is it the timeframe for reaping the rewards of investment?”, and “What are our organizational goals and how does Power Apps help us meet them?”. Your answers to these questions will help in plotting a process to ensure your organization exploits the opportunities to maximize the solution’s full benefits.

Get stakeholders on board

It is important to engage your stakeholders from the start of your application development process until its very end. Every member of the team who would directly and indirectly interact with and benefit from the application(s) being built should be involved to get their buy-in and feedback when necessary. This is especially critical for the end users – internal or external.

You should consider them in key milestones such as testing and incorporate their feedback in updates. Create simple mock-ups and wireframes they can review along the way. Ignoring them at any stage can have major consequences on your final product.

Employ an iterative process

Building on #2 above, the iterative process allows you to improve your application as you build. Schedule periodic review sessions with your team and focus groups that contain end users. At these sessions, everyone can engage the application and provide real-time feedback that will help you tweak parts of it require adjustment. This process will continue until you’ve achieved the intended result and the final version is acceptable for use. This is an important contributor to success when using Power Apps.

Create a strong governance strategy

Success with Power Apps is more likely when you establish a system that allows for a unified approach to application development within your organization. The lack of a governance strategy can open doors to unprecedented challenges such as pressure on your IT team, implementation failures, duplicated and redundant applications, and haphazard application deployment.

Worse still, you could end up with security issues such as a cyber or privacy breach. You can prevent this by recruiting the help of experts, known as a Center of Enablement (COE) team, champion your organization’s application development efforts. They will provide training to your team of developers, review their progress, and set parameters for success.

The answer: A Center of Enablement

As described in an earlier article of ours, a COE is an organizational structure that enables the distributed development of applications. It is a multi-disciplinary team that centralizes in-house development skills, talent and expertise in a way that makes information more accessible to your developers, while enhancing clarity, focus and consistency around your organization’s application building goals.

The COE team is central to your Power App deployment and should reflect the culture and scale of your organization. Their roles include but are not limited to establishing the mandate, vision, and goals of the Power Apps tool, providing ongoing communication and training, overseeing the Microsoft Center of Excellence (and other Power Platform features) to support continued success and maturity of your organization’s app development program, and ensuring compliance with set standards.

What is the Center of Excellence Starter Kit?

The Microsoft Power Platform COE Starter Kit is an integral part of the Power Platform: it’s a downloadable, solution that ties application building activity together. This “app of apps” contains capabilities, automations and dashboards that support the ownership, operation, and management of the platform.

The Center of Excellence Starter Kit comes with robust out-of-the-box capabilities to help you streamline your app-building processes, as well as tools to help you strengthen your governance practices. It consolidates important information all in one place thereby empowering your COE team to take risks, investigate new opportunities, and analyze existing behaviour.