#122. Ethan is a scrum master for a Power Platform team and his team is trying to build an app but the customer's product owner hasn't shown up yet! What should he do?

If your team's product owner is missing in action, in this episode you'll learn how to prevent this situation from happening, what to do to recover, and what could happen if you don't. 

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#121. What's it like trying to manage 10 Microsoft 365 tenants with hundreds of environments, apps and citizen developers. Rene Modery, Power Platform Technical Lead shares his journey at global advertising company, WPP. 

• Managing ten Microsoft 365 tenants for a global company with hundreds of subsidiaries.
• Power Platform environment policies and other guard rails to help makers.
• How do you know what apps have already been built and what problems have already been solved within a large organisation so that makers don't reinvent the wheel?
• Which data sources and connectors are proving to be the most popular in your Power Platform environments? SharePoint, Microsoft Lists, Excel, Azure SQL, Dataverse?
• Why Rene is not ready to ask makers to standardise on Dataverse quite yet.
• How the new Fluent UI controls will help app makers build apps that are better looking and more useful.
• If Rene could direct the Microsoft product teams to improve one thing, it would be...licensing!
• And he'd love to see some of the Center of Excellence features brought into the Power Platform Admin Center too.  
• And in person events are returning to the Power Platform user groups in Singapore.

Resources

• Rene Modery on Twitter
• Rene Modery on LinkedIn
• Rene's book, Hands-On Microsoft Lists
• Singapore Power Platform User Group

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#120. Hamish Sheild describes his five step Solution Mapping framework for using design thinking principles to define the requirements for complex Power Apps.

• Hamish has discovered Outlook's Board View and Neil is evaluating Motion for improving productivity.
• AppRising's Solution Mapping Framework
• What is a complex application?
• Observing users in their environment
• Customer journey mapping
• Swimlane business process mapping
• Are as-is process diagrams worth the effort?
• Creating a product backlog of user stories
• Focusing on value when creating a user story
• What's the right level of detail for user stories?
• Establishing a Power Platform centre of excellence. 
• Are centres of excellence only for organisations with lots of 'citizen developers'?

Resources

• Hamish Sheild on LinkedIn
• AppRising on LinkedIn
• AppRising website
• Microsoft Outlook Boards View videos on YouTube
• AppRising's Solution Mapping Framework for gathering and defining requirements for bespoke Power Platform applications.
• Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence (CoE) Starter Kit
• Dynamics 365 and Power Platform User Group, Auckland, New Zealand

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🟦 Customery on LinkedIn

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Keep experimenting 🧪

-Neil

#119. What's the role of pre-sales in setting up Microsoft customers and partners for successful Dynamics 365 and Power Platform projects? Today's guest is Craig McGeough, Power Platform Pre-Sales Consultant at Incremental Group.

Make sure you catch Craig's session, More than "selling the dream"! Why Pre-Sales is the key to Power Platform success, at Scottish Summit on Friday, 9 June 2022. Register for free today at ScottishSummit.com.

• What is pre-sales?
• Why do pre-sales consultants get paid soooo much?
• Do pre-sales consultants need a delivery or sales background?
• Industry specialisation in pre-sales
• The best thing about being a pre-sales consultant
• Keeping up-to-date with Power Platform enhancements
• Pre-sales and licensing expertise
• Microsoft Catalyst and Design Thinking as a pre-sales tool
• What's the role of pre-sales consultants in project estimation?
• Should pre-sales consultants care about delivery capacity?
• Career growth for pre-sales consultants

RESOURCES

• Craig's blog: PracticalPresales.com
• Craig McGeough on LinkedIn
• Incremental Group

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CONNECT

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#118. Ulrikke Akerbæk joins to discuss what's new with Power Pages (still called Power Apps Portals when we recorded this episode under NDA!). Discover some of the goodies Microsoft has been releasing for professional developers Power Pages and which portal template Ulrikke uses for almost every portals project.

Announcing the preview of Microsoft Power Pages on the Power Apps blog.

Ulrikke is the Low Code Platform Lead at Itera in Norway and has been a Microsoft MVP since 2021.

Ulrikke is presenting 'Portal Templates - What's new?' at Scottish Summit on Saturday 10 June 2002. Register today for Scottish Summit.

RESOURCES

• Ulrikke Akerbæk on LinkedIn
• Ulrikke Akerbæk on Twitter
• Nick Doelman on LinkedIn
• Victor Dantas on LinkedIn
• Victor Dantas' Portals Zero to Hero 1 playlist on YouTube
• Victor Dantas' Portals Zero to Hero 2 playlist on YouTube
• Nordic Summit, 24 September 2002 in Stockholm, Sweden
• Power Platform User Group Norway
• Find a Power Platform user group
• Find a Dynamics 365 user group

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CONNECT

🌏 Amazing Apps website

🟦 Customery on LinkedIn

🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn

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🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps

🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps

📐 Estimating Business Apps

Keep experimenting 🧪

-Neil

#117. Chike Eduputa challenges citizen developers (and professional developers) to ask themselves five critical questions before building their next Power Platform or Dynamics 365 app.

Chike Eduputa is a senior manager at Capgemini Invent in London where he specialises in digital strategy and transformation. He's presenting at Scottish Summit on 9 June with the topic "Build what matters: critical metrics for citizen developers".

Register today for Scottish Summit.

Chike invites us to answer five questions before embarking on a project to build a business application. Listen to the episode to find out more.

RESOURCES

• Chike Eduputa on LinkedIn
• Capgemini Invent

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🟦 Customery on LinkedIn

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-Neil

#116. Dani Kahil interviews Andrew Bibby about a pivotal, multi-year Dynamics 365 business transformation project in financial services. 

Dani Kahil and Andrew Bibby are both Microsoft Business Applications MVPs. Dani is an independent consultant and online trainer specialising in requirements analysis and solution envisioning. Andrew Bibby is a founder of Proximo 3, a Microsoft training and advisory partner based in the UK.

Dani and Andrew discuss:

• How Andrew's client engaged him as an advisor to help the customer and their Microsoft partner organisations work effectively together.
• They started with a proof of concept to evaluate the Dynamics 365 platform and their agile way of working.
• The customer had an application landscape including Dynamics 365, Azure, and on-premise systems.
• How a single productivity business goal supported the project's business case.
• Grappling with an agile approach and ultimately settling on a hybrid approach that involved lots of upfront requirements analysis and design (and the affects of this).
• The importance of both the product owner and the scrum master in an agile team.
• Using Azure DevOps to track requirements and realised the value in requirements traceability all the way from inception through to production releases.
• Configuring Azure DevOps with a custom work item template to make it easier to capture requirements.
• Challenges ensuring user stories were sufficiently detailed so that developers could understand them and how the team experience and tackled the challenge of requirements changing (or being clarified) mid sprint.
• The value that estimation techniques, like planning poker, can have on helping developers understand the requirements.
• Difficulties co-ordinating and communicating changes across multiple work streams so that everyone understands changes to processes, requirements, data models or APIS that might affect their work.
• How solution architects can play a role in communicating changes across work streams.
• Andrew's growing enthusiasm for change management, Prosci training and certification, and the positive impact that professional change management has on business application adoption.

RESOURCES

• Dani Kahil on LinkedIn
• Dani Kahil's blog
• Dani Kahil's Functional Consulting online training course - Requirements analysis for a successful project delivery for Dynamics 365 or the Power Platform
• Andrew Bibby on LinkedIn
• Andrew Bibby on Twitter
• Proximo 3 website
• Prosci change management training

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Keep experimenting 🧪

-Neil

#115. Angeliki Patsiavou is on a mission to help Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform application development teams introduce professional change managers to their projects from inception instead of deferring it until near the end.

Angeliki is a senior consultant at Avanade, specialising in change management, and has a background as a change manager at HSBC and a digital marketer.

Join us as we highlight her upcoming presentation at Scottish Summit, "The chicken-egg dilemma; should product development or change management come first in CRM systems?"

RESOURCES

• Angeliki Patsiavou on LinkedIn 
• Angeliki Patisavou on Twitter
• Register today for Scottish Summit (655 tickets remaining).

Support the show

CONNECT

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🟦 Customery on LinkedIn

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🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps

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Keep experimenting 🧪

-Neil

#114. I'm joined by Microsoft MVPs Guro Faller and Tricia Sinclair. Guro and Tricia are presenting at Scottish Summit in Glasgow in June.

Their presentation is "Personalize Your Customer Experience with Dynamics 365". It's going to be a showcase of the art of the possible with Dynamics 365 Marketing, Customer Insights, and Omni-channel for Customer Service.

Guests

Tricia Sinclair is a customer service lead at Avanade, and she's based in London in the UK.

• Tricia Sinclair on LinkedIn
• Tricia Sinclair on Twitter
• Tricia's blog EverythingD365 on Azure DevOps and Dynamics 365

Guro Faller is a solution lead in the digital marketing center of excellence also at Avanade, and she's based in Oslo, in Norway.

• Guro Faller on LinkedIn

Resources

• Register for Scottish Summit (only 685 tickets remaining)
• Register for Scottish Summit Pub Quiz on Eventbrite
• Microsoft Customer Experience Platform announcement
• Customer Experience User Group
• Power Platform School

Support the show

CONNECT

🌏 Amazing Apps website

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🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps

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Keep experimenting 🧪

-Neil

#113. Vivian Voss joins me to discuss her upcoming Scottish Summit session, From the Basement to the Cloud - Your Journey from CRM on-premises to Dynamics 365 CE.

Register today for Scottish Summit.

Congratulations to Yacob Shenkute from Power Platform School for achieving his Scrum.org PSM1 certification.

Resources

• Vivian Voss on LinkedIn 
• Vivian Voss on Twitter
• Vivian's blog
• Customer Experience Platform user group

Support the show

CONNECT

🌏 Amazing Apps website

🟦 Customery on LinkedIn

🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn

MY ONLINE COURSES

🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps

🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps

📐 Estimating Business Apps

Keep experimenting 🧪

-Neil