Using Story Points to Estimate Power Platform and Dynamics 365 Apps

#90. Join me with Stephen Handley,founder, CEO and chief architect at Fin365, an application development business serving financial services professionals in Australia. Fin365 was born out of need for better data management practice management platform that Stephen identified in his own financial planning business.Our discussion covers:How Stephen's background of being a software developer and a financial adviser could be the perfect blend of expertise for his application development business.  What led to the choice of Microsoft Dynamics over Salesforce or Zoho or others?How a product from the heavily regulated Australian financial services industry can be adapted for other international markets and their regulations.What it is like selling a product to the financial industry which is under so much transformation.Advice to startups thinking about or who already started developing on the Microsoft Power Platform.ResourcesAmey Holden and Neil Benson Pimp LinkedIn profiles Stephen Handley on LinkedIn Fin365 on LinkedIn Fin365 website Amazing Applications podcast page on LinkedInAmazing Applications podcast page on PodchaserScrum for Microsoft Business Apps online course at Customery AcademyAgile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps free online mini-course at Customery AcademySupport the showCONNECT🌏 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

8 Juni 202143min

#89. Join me with Mohammad Mohsin Khalid. And he's the founder, CEO and chief architect at Imperium Dynamics. He and his team built a Power Portal to support a million constituents booking their COVID test appointments, and they did it in less than 100 hours.Our discussion covers:The physical logistics of drive-up COVID testing for thousands of people.Why custom scheduling was used instead of the inbuilt scheduling functionality of the Dynamics Healthcare Accelerator on Power PlatformThe unique challenges faced when developing an application to be scalable for a million people to use.The kinds of building blocks available in the Healthcare Accelerator that can be used.Lessons learned from building an application in a very short timeframe. Resources Power Platform User Group Public PreviewPower BI User Group Public PreviewDynamics 365 User Group Public PreviewAgile Applications virtual user groupMohammad Mohsin Khalid on LinkedInRapid Digital Transformation Partner | Imperium DynamicsMicrosoft Cloud for Healthcare | MicrosoftFHIR [Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources]Amazing Applications podcast page on LinkedInAmazing Applications podcast page on PodchaserScrum for Microsoft Business Apps online course at Customery AcademyAgile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps free online mini-course at Customery AcademySupport the showCONNECT🌏 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

31 Maj 202142min

#88. Join me with Brendan Eger,  an Associate Director of Information Systems and Analytics at Partners In Health in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Brendan's story is a fascinating journey of a small, bootstrapped team adopting the Power Platform.Our discussion covers:Knowledge sharing within teams - invest in team members in a semi-formal structured environment, sharing what they've just learned with their coworkers.Overcoming the end-user learning curve moving from Excel to Power BI.Why Partners in Health chose to invest in the Microsoft Power Platform.Unexpected benefits of the Finance team building their own app.The benefit of developing transferable skills during a relatively simple app build.Finding the balance between a small technical team and users who want to build their own apps.ResourcesBrendan Eger on LinkedInPartners In Health (pih.org)Dashboard in a Day (microsoft.com)App in a Day Event Web page (microsoftevents.com)Amazing Applications podcast page on LinkedInAmazing Applications podcast page on PodchaserScrum for Microsoft Business Apps online course at Customery AcademyAgile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps free online mini-course at Customery AcademySupport the showCONNECT🌏 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

25 Maj 202139min

#87. Join me with Mandar Zope, a principal consultant at Slalom Consulting from Seattle. Mandar has been busy building business applications that are being used by a hundred thousand users at a global oil and gas company.Our discussion covers:The user adoption approach used to train and communicate with thousands or tens of thousands of users at a time, using Power Apps.Building data import automation using Power Automate.Approaches to taking a big enterprise portfolio of applications and breaking them up.Working with design engineers from the very beginning of the project, so that they can create customer journeys.Increased frequency of builds so that QA can be performed in more frequent chunks.How to handle platform evolution during the lifecycle of the application development. ResourcesMandar Zope on LinkedinMandar Zope #ProCodeNoCodeUnite (@mzope) on TwitterSeattle Power Platform User Group (Seattle, WA) | MeetupAmazing Applications podcast page on LinkedInAmazing Applications podcast page on PodchaserScrum for Microsoft Business Apps online course at Customery AcademyAgile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps free online mini-course at Customery AcademySupport the showCONNECT🌏 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

17 Maj 202134min

#86. Join me with Paul Heisterkamp, a Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations solution architect and developer at GWS in Germany. Paul shares with us his story of a multi-country Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations project for an international automotive parts supplier.Our discussion covers:Phasing long-term international enterprise projects.Adopting an agile approach to ERP.Dealing with the challenges of remote working.How they bet on the first version of Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations running in the cloud a couple of years ago, as well as upgrading every six months.Application life cycle management with Lifecycle Services and Azure DevOps and working with the Microsoft FastTrack team successfully. ResourcesPaul Heisterkamp on LinkedInPaul Heisterkamp on twitterGWS on LinkedInMicrosoft FastTrack Success By Design Implementation GuideSuccess By Design learning resources | Microsoft DocsFastTrack Recognized Solution Architect programPaul Heisterkamp Wordpress blogAmazing Applications podcast page on LinkedInAmazing Applications podcast page on PodchaserScrum for Microsoft Business Apps online course at Customery AcademyAgile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps free online mini-course at Customery AcademySupport the showCONNECT🌏 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

11 Maj 202135min

#85. Join me with Julie Yack and Julian Sharp as we  discuss my question, "Are Microsoft certifications causing projects to fail?" Julie Yack is a founder and the chief operations officer at Colorado Technology Consultants. She's an author, a trainer, a solution architect, and an MVP. Julian Sharp is the founder of Ready 365. He recently received an MVP award and is best known as a prolific Microsoft trainer. Over the past 10 or 15 or 20 years, he's trained thousands of people in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform technologies. The training and certification opportunities for everyone building Microsoft business applications have never been better. Our discussion covers:Whether the time spent on attaining and maintaining Microsoft business applications certifications, is crowding out the amount of time that people have for other types of learning needed to have successful projects.Where to start to embark on a certification refresh of your own resume.An overview of what is involved in making a certification from Microsoft's perspective.Why you need more than just Microsoft certifications to build amazing business applications.ResourcesJulie Yack on LinkedIn Julian Sharp on LinkedIn Microsoft Learn Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master PMI Project Management Professional Prosci Change Practitioner LinkedIn Learning Support the showCONNECT🌏 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

3 Maj 202140min

#84. Join me with Britt Damkjaer, customer excellence and change management coach and the founder of bd relations in Copenhagen, Denmark as we discuss change management and business applications and other insights from her experience as a product owner and coach. I like how Britt is expanding our minds to thinking not just about our users, but also our end customers and the impact that our business applications are going to have on the customer experience, too.Our discussion covers:The significance of the role of the Product Owner in Business Development projects.Why Britt wrote her book, "It's Our Customer".Change management approach for Agile projects compared to organizations that are taking a waterfall approach to projects.The three biggest lessons that Britt conveys in the book from her 20 years of experience.The biggest mistakes that Britt has seen from a change management perspective.ResourcesBritt Damkjaer on LinkedInIT'S OUR CUSTOMER book page on Britt's website with a preview of the bookRegister for Achieve Successful CRM webinarAmazing Applications podcast page on LinkedInAmazing Applications podcast page on PodchaserScrum for Microsoft Business Apps online course at Customery AcademyAgile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps free online mini-course at Customery AcademySupport the showCONNECT🌏 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

26 Apr 202140min

#83. Bonus extended interview with Marc Schweigert,  principal program manager on the Power Customer Advisory Team at Microsoft as we talk about Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) approaches suited to novices and citizen developers through to professional developers. In this bonus extended interview, I ask Marc 10 rapid-fire "would you rather" questions:Drink Australian wine or Australian beer?Use Scrum or SureStep?Include comments in your code or write unambiguous code?Call it a table or an entity?Ship a managed or unmanaged solution into production?Offer users a Choices field or a Lookup?Automate something in a flow or a LogicApp?Have one instance per dev or a shared development instance?Use Azure DevOps or GitHub?Include a canvas app or a PCF control in a model-driven app?ResourcesMarc Schweigert on LinkedIndevkeydet (@devkeydet) on TwitterALM Patterns and PracticesALM Toolkit for MakersALM Toolkit for Advanced MakersScottish Summit: From Zero to ALM in DemosPowerCAT Live channel on YouTubeAmazing Applications podcast page on PodchaserScrum for Microsoft Business Apps online course at Customery AcademyAgile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps free online mini-course at Customery AcademySupport the showCONNECT🌏 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

21 Apr 202110min