With such opportunity, comes great responsibility. How do business leaders and security teams implement that Power Platform with confidence that security will not be compromised and shadow I.T. will not run wild?
The answer is Microsoft’s Power Platform Centre of Excellence (CoE).
Installing Microsoft Power Platform Centre of Excellence (CoE) is a valuable step for organizations looking to maximise the benefits of Power Platform while maintaining governance and control.
What is the CoE?
- A CoE is a collection of tools and practices designed to help organizations adopt, manage, and govern the Microsoft Power Platform effectively.
– It serves as a central function that breaks down geographic and organizational silos, aligning teams around company-wide business goals rather than individual department metrics.
- The CoE fosters innovation, sets standards, shares best practices, ensures compliance, and guides strategic technology use across the organization.
Key Components of a CoE
- Strategy Development: Workshops to understand pain points, risk appetite, and business objectives. Create a Power Platform strategy and roadmap.
- Installation and Configuration: Audit the existing Power Platform environment and set up the CoE using tools like the Power Platform Starter Kit.
- Governance and Security:
- Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Implement policies to secure the platform and prevent data leaks.
- Platform Hygiene Audit: Assess what’s important and what isn’t, ensuring a clean and efficient environment.
- Community Building:
- Training Sessions: Empower users with knowledge and skills.
- Communication Channels: Utilize Microsoft Teams and SharePoint for collaboration.
- Environment Management: Create Power Platform environments for rapid and secure component releases.
- Continuous Learning and Evolution: CoEs evolve over time, adapting to changing needs and technologies¹.
Microsoft Power Platform CoE Starter Kit
- This kit provides a reference implementation to jumpstart your CoE efforts.
- It includes components and tools for developing a strategy, monitoring, and automation.
- The foundation is a Microsoft Dataverse data model with workflows to collect resource information across environments.
- Multiple apps and Power BI analytics allow you to view and interact with the collected data.
- Remember that while the kit provides tools, the CoE itself must be thoughtfully designed based on your organization’s unique needs and preferences.
Why your company needs a Power Platform strategy
By installing confidence, process, and security into your Power Platform implementation, you’re setting the stage for successful adoption and growth.
Certainly! A company should consider adopting the Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence (CoE) for several reasons:
- Innovation and Improvement: Establishing a CoE is the first step in fostering greater creativity and innovation across the organization¹. It empowers business units to digitize and automate their business processes, while maintaining the necessary level of central oversight and governance¹.
- Breaking Down Silos: As a central function, a CoE can break down geographic and organizational silos¹. It aligns the organization around business goals rather than individual department metrics
- Governance and Control: The CoE helps manage three essential aspects of adopting the Power Platform: administration, operations, and nurturing. It establishes clear governance guidelines to reduce the risk of shadow IT and manages how makers are using databases, connectors, and permissions.
- Support and Enablement: The CoE provides support to makers and enables them to develop solutions that align with company-wide business goals. It encourages greater creativity and innovation across the company.
- Monitoring and Automation: The CoE Starter Kit provides some automation and tooling to help teams build monitoring necessary to support a CoE. It includes multiple apps and Power BI analytics to view and interact with the data you collect.
By adopting the Microsoft Power Platform CoE, a company can effectively manage its Power Platform resources, drive innovation, and maintain control and governance, all while fostering a culture of creativity and digitization.
