In this next post in my series on solution architecture for the Power Platform we’re going to move on to talking about the part of BAU and operations which is continuous improvement for a solution we’ve put and that has gone live.
Recap
If you haven’t read the previous post in this series below, check out the below!
Now let’s talk about some considerations for continuous improvement.
The need
So friends, for any solutions you put into production and that go-live, more commonly those medium t-shirt sized and above, they may require the odd small change or enhancement, or even periodic small sized work items being completed to regularly patch and improve the solution (small releases).
When it comes to business operations, lots of organisations commonly want to continue to improve these processes and refine in various areas, which can result in the need for change to our solutions.
This is where we may need to implement a continuous improvement or CoE type function or managed service for a customer for their specific solution that we support.
Get the right team in place
Okay friends, so same as support, when it comes to needing to continue to improve the solution you need to get the right people in place with the correct technical skills who will be able to continue to improve the solution in question. This may mean finding consultants with similar skills to those who built the solution in the first place, but this is super important for ensuring the solutions continuous improvement goes smoothly!
Periodic Releases and Development Schedule
The next thing we can think about in terms of providing a service for continuous development, or even if the customer / organisation puts this in place themselves… is how we manage periodic workflow/releases and a deployment schedule. It may be that if we’re working with a pretty large solution with a fairly hands on team and a good amount of time to dedicate, that releases happen bi-weekly. Alternatively, it may be that we’re working with a smaller solution and not a need for such regular deployments where we’d possibly only release once a month.
Handover
Another consideration to think about is handling the solution over to a continuous development or CoE team for continuous work on it and improvements or patches. We need to consider a similar handover that we may have previously done with a support team for this, which we’ll look at in more detail in the next post.
What’s coming up?
In the next post, we’ll finish up by focusing on considerations for handover to a continuous development team.