Amazing Apps - learn how to build agile Dynamics 365 and Power Platform business apps using Scrum

#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&a...

#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 aut...

#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 chal...

#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...

#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 busines...

#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 Aus...

#82. Join me with Marc Schweigert, a  programme 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. A healthy application lifecycle process is critical if you're going to build amazing, agile, Dynamics 365 and Power Apps platform applications. I...

#81. Gustaf Westerlund CIO and founder at CRM-Konsulterna asks, "How can we get customers to really understand that an agile approach is best for them?"  Agile is built on trust. Trust that the developing partner will do their best. But if the customer has been burned many times before, this can be hard to gain. And half-hearted trust becomes half-hearted agile." I dive into the det...

#80. Richard asks about working with user stories in a Dynamics 365 or Power Platform agile project. I'll spend this episode talking about user stories on Dynamics 365 and Power Platform projects and I’ll share three traps to avoid when working with user stories when building Power Platform and Dynamics 365 apps using Scrum. The first trap is the level of detail.  The second trap is splitting...

#79. Bonus extended interview with CJ Brooks, a Fundraising and Engagement Architect at Mission CRM as we talk about how Mission CRM closed the doors on their consulting practice to focus on building the Mission CRM fundraising and engagement application for nonprofit organizations. In this bonus episode, CJ and I try to solve the Elon Musk problem in data verse. Resources CJ Brooks on LinkedIn MI...

#78. Join me with CJ Brooks, a Fundraising and Engagement Architect at Mission CRM as we talk about how Mission CRM closed the doors on their consulting practice to focus on building the Mission CRM fundraising and engagement application for nonprofit organizations.  Make sure you stick around until the end of this episode to find out how you can get access to the bonus episode with Neil Benson an...

#77. Bonus extended interview with Bert Wijns, a Global Solution Strategy Architect a Microsoft and co-founder of Power Accelerate as we talk about the tool he created which allows you to take a screenshot of a legacy application or database schema and have a Power App built in a few minutes with the legacy data migrated. Sound crazy? Listen on to hear more about Bert Wijns' Power Accelerate....

#76. Join me with Bert Wijns, a Global Solution Strategy Architect a Microsoft and co-founder of Power Accelerate as we talk about the tool he created which allows you to take a screenshot of a legacy application or database schema and have a Power App built in a few minutes with the legacy data migrated. Sound crazy? Listen on to hear more about Bert Wijns' Power Accelerate. Make sure you st...

#75. Join me with Haniel Croitoru, Associate Director of Protiviti, a Technology Consulting solutions provider in Toronto, Canada.  Haniel shares a story about one of his power platform projects for a not-for-profit client and shares the lessons learned about multi-language deployments, implementation approach, executive sponsorship, and change in user adoption.  Our discussion covers: The importa...

#74. Join me with Vasco Duarte who runs Oikosofy a coaching company in Finland and is also behind the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. Vasco is the author of a fascinating book, #NoEstimates. Vasco and I chat about the challenges of estimating complex business application software, particularly in the CRM and ERP domains, and how the No Estimates movement and the method covered in his book can help b...

#73. Daryl LaBar and Jonas Rapp, co-hosts of the XrmToolCast join Neil Benson to answer the questions about how to document complex systems when asked to "devise a roadmap for migrating a Dynamics CRM 2013 and a CRM 2016 environment into a single Dynamics 365 online environment ." A documentation tools masterclass from two experts in the field who discuss what tools to use for on-premise...

#72. Michael Nunes asks, "When multiple systems are being delivered by different parties, I find that we have to design the details upfront, then use agile for the delivery of the Dynamics 365 systems. Is this your experience too?" Michael's question has two layers that we address in this episode: upfront design and team composition. Upfront design is based on three assumptions: We...

#71. Daniel Kerridge says, "I'm the only developer in my team so I just wondered if there's a special version of Scrum that works in that scenario." There are three sets of accountabilities in the scrum team: the product owner, the scrum master and developers. But how many developers do you need? In the previous version of the Scrum Guide, the recommended minimum number of deve...

#70.  Dan Madden , a program manager at Acensus, asks, "What’s the best way to help bridge that gap between [IT and] the business and ultimately the end-users?" In this episode, you'll learn about the five characteristics of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform projects that have a close relationship between business and IT so that there's no gap in your business applications initia...

#69. In this episode, Andreas Dutz, Business Development Manager at HSO from Bavaria, Germany, asks, "Have you defined what agile means? Are your teams trained in the Agile Manifesto and are your teams applying it today?" The Manifesto for Agile Software development has some flaws you should be aware of. Instead of memorising it and applying it word for word, your teams should consider i...

#68. What does the structure of a scales business application project look like? What groups and roles do you need when you've got 50 or more team members working together for a year or more to build a large, complex application? In this episode, you'll learn about a model project structure so that you can compare it to yours or use it as a baseline when establishing your own enterprise...

#67. In this Q&A episode, Stephen Price , Digital Solution Architect at ITK Consulting in Canada, asks, "How should we manage scope creep within a sprint in an agile project?" The scope of our product is defined by the product backlog, and the scope of our project is a subset of the product backlog. Both are managed by the product owner: the single person responsible and accountable...

#66.  Matt Venamore , scrum master at RACQ, asks about how to handle data migration on agile Dynamics 365 projects. My recommended approach is for the data migration team to conduct a proof-of-concept or prototyping exercise (just like many business apps teams do) to uncover challenges, test their assumptions and learn as much as possible about the data. Then work closely with the business applica...

#65. Neil discusses the five most important changes in Scrum Guide 2020  for Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 teams: It's less strict and less about software One team (except when there're multiple teams) Commitments clarified - the Product Goal No more roles Increments Customery Academy's course, Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps , will be updated in time for the new Scrum...

#64.  Carolle Bruce , Director of Information Technology at Avcorp Industries in Vancouver, asks, "What's the best argument for when senior management says, 'All this agile stuff is great but I don't see why you'd have a scrum master on your project when you could have an agile PM instead.'?" There are some important differences between the role and responsibilit...