5 Dynamics Instances, 1 Grand Plan, and a Lot of Solutions

Let’s be honest—when most folks hear “Application Lifecycle Management,” their eyes glaze over faster than a January window in Edinburgh. But stick with me, because what Nevermore Technology is doing with ALM and Microsoft Power Platform is actually impressive. And, dare I say, quite clever.

This is the first of 12 blogs where we’ll follow Nevermore’s slightly ambitious, highly strategic journey as they roll out five separate Dynamics 365 instances, each covering different bits of the business. We’ll be diving into everything from canvas app chaos to form merge nightmares, and hopefully saving a few souls from learning things the hard way.

So, what’s ALM when it’s at home?

ALM—Application Lifecycle Management if you’re fancy—is all about how you manage apps from the minute someone says “I’ve got an idea”, through development, testing, deployment, and eventually keeping it all alive in production without breaking anything.

In the world of Power Platform, ALM includes:

• Setting up proper environments (Dev, Test, Pre-Prod, and Production—you know, the grown-up way)
• Wrapping your work in solutions so it can be moved and maintained
• Using source control and pipelines to stop everything turning into spaghetti
• And keeping a watchful eye with governance tools like the CoE Starter Kit

Basically, it’s how you keep the wheels on when you’ve got dozens (or hundreds) of apps flying about.

Nevermore Technology’s Setup (Aye, It’s a Big One)

Nevermore isn’t messing around. They’ve split their digital estate across five Dynamics 365 instances—and no, that’s not excessive when you look at what each one’s doing. It’s smart. It avoids clutter. And most importantly, it means each area of the business gets the right tools with the right level of control.

Here’s what they’ve got:

Instance 1: Sales and Marketing

The place where leads are chased, customers are nurtured, and someone’s always asking for “just one more field” on the form. Full of Customer Insights Journeys, lead scoring, and campaign automation.

Instance 2: Support and Contact Centre

Tickets, SLAs, chatbots and enough case data to melt your SQL brain. This one’s high-stakes—support teams don’t like downtime, and neither do the customers.

Instance 3: Centre of Excellence & Pipelines

This is the command centre. Power Platform Pipelines, ALM Accelerator from the CoE Starter Kit, governance tools, and the place where all the rules live. Or at least try to.

Instance 4: The Canvas App Forest

More than 50 canvas apps, all doing important things like managing assets, booking field workers, or tracking coffee supplies (probably). Keeping these updated without ALM would be like herding cats—blindfolded.

Instance 5: Integration-Heavy Model-Driven Apps

Fifteen model-driven apps, deeply connected to internal systems, external services, and a fair share of APIs. Think of this one like mission control for business operations.

And every single one of these instances has its own set of Dev, Test, Pre-Production, and Production environments. That’s right—20 environments in total. Because if you’re going to do this properly, there’s no room for “just deploy it and hope.”

Why This Isn’t Madness

Now, some might say five instances is a bit much. But let’s be clear—Nevermore didn’t do this for fun. Each area of the business has its own lifecycle, team, pace of change, and sometimes even different regulatory requirements. Keeping them separated makes deployments cleaner, testing safer, and governance tighter.

What ties it all together is ALM. Solutions (managed and unmanaged), source control strategies, branching models, and pipelines keep the chaos in check. The real trick isn’t just building apps—it’s updating them without breaking half the business.

What’s Coming Next

This blog series will take you through Nevermore’s whole ALM journey—warts, wonders, and all. We’ll talk about:

• How they build and deploy canvas apps without crying
• What it takes to manage solution layering and avoid “last one wins” chaos
• Why source control isn’t optional (even if it makes some makers twitchy)
• How pipelines work across instances and how the CoE keeps everyone in line

You’ll learn the practical side of all the official guidance but with far fewer buzzwords and more actual use cases.

Next up: We’ll dig into environment strategy. Why Nevermore didn’t just use the Default environment (hint: because they’re not maniacs), and how separating out your lifecycle makes everything a lot less painful.

If you’ve ever wondered how big orgs manage Power Platform at scale—or if you’re quietly planning your own empire—this series is for you.