Showcases or Sprint Reviews? – YouTube
Is there a difference between showcases and sprint reviews for Scrum teams building Dynamics 365 or Power Platform applications? I think there is. This video includes a preview from my Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps online course at https://customery.com/scrum. 0:00 Start 0:20 Candidates keep calling it a showcase 0:35 What’s a showcase in Scrum? 1:00 Sprint review 1:22 Purpose of the sprint review 1:39 Sprint review duration...
Ten Product Owner Myths on Power Platform and Dynamics 365 Projects
In this solo episode, I continue the deeper dive into the role of the Product Owner, who is responsible for maximizing the impact of the application that the scrum team is building. And I think our product owners in Power Platform and Dynamics 365 projects have a couple of twists compared to product owners on other scrum teams. This episode covers 10 myths about Product Owners. Resources
Scrum Product Goals for Power Platform and Dynamics 365 Applications
In this solo episode I dive deeper into getting into the right mindset to build applications. In the last episode, we looked at ten potential candidates for the product owner role in our scrum teams building Power Platform and Dynamics 365 applications. In this episode, we're going to continue the product owner topic by helping the product owner set a product goal. This episode covers: The… Continue Reading Neil...
040 Finding Your Product Owner
In this solo episode I dive deeper into getting into the right mindset to build applications, including using the Scrum agile approach. This episode covers: Why the Product Owner is the most critical role in the Scrum team.The accountability of the Product Owner.Which type of person within an organisation makes the best Product Owner.Hurdles and roadblocks encountered during the development of… Continue Reading Neil...
Finding Your Scrum Product Owner
In this solo episode I dive deeper into getting into the right mindset to build applications, including using the Scrum agile approach. This episode covers: Why the Product Owner is the most critical role in the Scrum team.The accountability of the Product Owner.Which type of person within an organisation makes the best Product Owner.Hurdles and roadblocks encountered during the development of… Continue Reading Neil...
Apps for Winning Awards with Gail Mercer-MacKay
Join me with Gail Mercer-MacKay, the founder and CEO of Mercer-MacKay. They have a unique position in the Microsoft ecosystem: they help Microsoft partners clarify their marketing message and produce compelling digital content that inspires Microsoft customers to take action. Our discussion covers: Why Mercer-MacKay decided to Deploy Microsoft business applications internally.Gail's… Continue Reading Neil Benson’s...
Power BI Deferred Design with Reza Rad
Join me with Reza Rad, the founder and CEO of RADACAD providing Power BI training and consultancy services to thousands of Microsoft customers and partners every year. Reza's list of achievements is pretty embarrassing. He's not just a 10 times Microsoft MVP. He's a dual category MVP. The first in Artificial Intelligence. And he's also a Data Platform MVP. He's a Microsoft Regional Director…. Continue...
A developer turned financial advisor turned developer again with Stephen Handley
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… Continue Reading ‘s...
Build a Power Portal for 1 million users in 100 hours with Mohammed Mohsin Khalid
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… Continue Reading ‘s...
Power Platform at Partners In Health with Brendan Eger
Join me with Brendan Eger, an Associate Director of Information Systems and Analytics at Partners In Health in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Brandan'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… Continue Reading...
Power Apps for 100,000 users with Mandar Zope
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… Continue Reading Neil Benson’s...
Agile Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations with Paul Heisterkamp
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… Continue Reading Neil Benson’s...
Are Microsoft Certifications Causing Projects to Fail? with Julie Yack and Julian Sharp
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… Continue Reading Neil...
Change Management with Britt Damkjaer
Join me with Britt Damkjaer, a 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… Continue Reading Neil Benson’s...
Bonus Extended Interview with Marc Schweigert
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. Bonus Extended Interview: 10 rapid-fire "would you rather" questions 1 Drink Australian wine or Australian beer? 2 Use Scrum or… Continue Reading Neil...
Agile Application Lifecycle Management with Marc Schweigert
Marc Schweigert | LinkedIndevkeydet (@devkeydet) / TwitterALM Patterns and Practices https://docs.microsoft.com/power-platform/alm?WT.mc_id=BA-MVP-4028946 ALM Toolkit for Makers ALM Accelerator for Makers – Power Platform | Microsoft DocsALM Toolkit for Adavanced Makers coe-starter-kit/GETTINGSTARTED.md at main · microsoft/coe-starter-kit · GitHubScottish Summit: From Zero to ALM in Demos
Selling Scrum to Microsoft Customers
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 detail and expand on… Continue Reading Neil...
Three Traps to Avoid Working with User Stories and Power Platform or Dynamics 365
Today is a solo episode where I address a listener's question. 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… Continue Reading Neil...
Bonus Extended Interview with CJ Brooks at MISSION CRM
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
The Making of MISSION CRM with CJ Brooks
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 and… Continue Reading Neil...
Bonus Extended Interview with Bert Wijns at Power Accelerate
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… Continue Reading ‘s Article on their blog...
Automagically Building Power Apps with Bert Wijns at Power Accelerate
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 stick… Continue Reading Neil...
Building Power Platform Applications for a Church with Haniel Croitoru
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 importance… Continue Reading Neil...
#NoEstimates for Business Applications with Vasco Duarte
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 called No Estimate’s. 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… Continue Reading Neil...
Business Applications with #NoEstimates with Vasco Duarte
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 called No Estimate’s. 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… Continue Reading Neil...
Estimating Power Apps and Microsoft Dynamics 365 – YouTube
Learn three new ways of estimating complex Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Apps applications using #FastEstimates (epic user stories, planning poker, user story maps, and estimated velocity) or #FasterEstimates (epic user stories, affinity estimation, user story maps, and estimated velocity) or #NoEstimates (number of epics and assumed velocity). From #ScottishSummit2021. source
Documenting Power Apps with Daryl LaBar and Jonas Rapp
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… Continue Reading Neil...
Should We Design Upfront When Scaling Agile Application Development?
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 can know all the… Continue Reading...
Can a Scrum Team Have a Single Developer?
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 developers to have a… Continue Reading...
Bridging the Gap Between Business and IT
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 initiatives. Support the show… Continue...
Should Business Apps Teams Follow the Agile Manifesto?
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 your, your teams should consider it and devise… Continue Reading Neil...
6 Roles Every Enterprise Business Applications Project Should Have
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 as a baseline when establishing your own enterprise project… Continue Reading Neil...
How to manage scope creep in an agile project?
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 for the product… Continue Reading...
Data migration in agile Dynamics 365 projects
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 applications… Continue Reading Neil...
What the Scrum Guide 2020 means for Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 teams
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 softwareOne team (except when there’re multiple teams)Commitments clarified – the Product GoalNo more rolesIncrements Customery Academy’s course, Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps, will be updated in time for the new Scrum.org Professional Scrum…...
Why have a scrum master when we could have an agile project manager?
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 responsibilities of a project manager and a...
Should we have a standard set of user stories for Microsoft business applications?
David Mochrie, a Power Platform consultant at Magnetism in Auckland, asks, “Should we have a standard set of user stories for Dynamics 365?”A long time ago, I tried to make it easy to write detailed user interface design specifications for Dynamics CRM using a wireframe prototyping tool called Axure RP Pro.I spent hundreds of hours building replicas of hundreds of Dynamics CRM screens that I… Continue Reading Neil...
How can we adopt Scrum for Dynamics 365 Business Central projects?
Anand Kushalnagar, a project manager at Nexon Asia Pacific in Sydney, asks, “At the moment, we are using a hybrid implementation approach for our projects. How can you deliver Dynamics 365 business central projects in a fully agile methodology when there are so many dependencies between the various modules?”You can transition to Scrum gradually by introducing one or two agile practices to your… Continue Reading Neil...
How can we be sure we've captured all requirements?
Mark Llewellyn, Director of Technology at Osmosys Software Solutions in London asks, “How can you be sure you’ve captured all the requirements?”Traditional approaches, like Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step, pretend that we can capture all the requirements upfront at the start of a project before we’ve started development.Upfront requirements analysis doesn’t work. You can’t capture requirements...
Scrum Guide 2020 launch event
This year, Scrum is celebrating its 25th anniversary. To celebrate, the Scrum Guide 2020 is being published at a free global launch event at 10:00 EST on Wednesday 18 November 2020. Click here to register for the Scrum Guide 2020 launch event The launch event is being hosted on Zoom, and the largest Zoom plan has an attendee limit of 1,000. Register for the event today, and join the session early… Continue Reading Neil...
Q&A: Product Owners and Dynamics 365
Welcome to a season of Q&A episodes on the Amazing Applications podcast where Neil Benson, Microsoft MVP, will do his best to answer your questions about building amazing applications.Neal Carty, a Business Solutions Consultant at Traction On Demand in Toronto asks: How does the Professional Scrum Product Owner certification compare to the Professional Scrum Master certification, and is it… Continue Reading Neil...
Have you ever fired a client?
I had to fire a client this week.I felt terrible that I wasn’t able to help, yet relieved that I stuck to my approach and my principles.Listen in to find out what happened. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/amazingapps) Continue Reading Neil Benson’s Article on their blog No Title No Description Blog Syndicated with Neil Benson’s...
Dynamics 365 for Talent at Centria with Ana Inés Urrutia de Souza
Join me with Ana Inés Urrutia de Souza, a Dynamics 365 HR consultant at FourVision and a rising star in our Power Platform community. Ana shares the story behind the amazing Dynamics 365 for Talent application her team deployed at Centria, in Lima, Peru.Ana came from an HR administrator role and today is an HR application functional consultant at FourVision.Ana’s project team created a… Continue Reading Neil Benson’s...
Dynamics 365 for Talent with Ana Inés Urrutia de Souza
Join me with Ana Inés Urrutia de Souza, a Dynamics 365 HR consultant at FourVision and a rising star in our Power Platform community. Ana shares the story behind the amazing Dynamics 365 for Talent application her team deployed at Centria, in Lima, Peru.Ana came from an HR administrator role and today is an HR application functional consultant at FourVision.Ana’s project team created a… Continue Reading Neil Benson’s...
Dynamics Con 2020 with Molly Fuschel
The biggest online community event of the year, Dynamics Con 2020, is just around the corner: Wednesday 9 to Thursday 10 September. I’m joined in this special episode by a special guest to discuss this special event — the event’s director, Molly Fuschel.You can register for free today at DynamicsCon.com.I’m presenting “Tell Me a Story”, which will be packed with proven practices for managing…...
Relative Estimation with Harry Potter books – YouTube
What can Harry Potter teach us about the relative estimation of Microsoft Business Applications? My son, Jensen, has just finished reading his first Harry Potter book and drops in to explain relative estimation. source
BDD: Behaviour-driven development for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Apps – YouTube
What is behaviour-driven development (BDD) and how can we use it to improve the quality of our Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform apps? Join my free Agile Foundations mini-course: https://customery.com/foundations. — Behavioural test is an acceptance test written in plain language that users can write and understand — Explain the context, event and outcome in given-when-then format — Can be written before,...
Estimating: how long and how much
In this second episode on estimating Microsoft Business Applications we answer your financial sponsor’s two favourite questions: How long is it going to take?How much is it going to cost? If you’re a Dynamics 365 or Power Platform project manager, business analyst, solution architect, pre-sales consultant, developer, or in business development, you’ll find out how to answer those key questions… Continue Reading...
Estimating: How Much and How Long
In this second episode on estimating Microsoft Business Applications we answer your financial sponsor’s two favourite questions: How long is it going to take?How much is it going to cost? If you’re a Dynamics 365 or Power Platform project manager, business analyst, solution architect, pre-sales consultant, developer, or in business development, you’ll find out how to answer those key questions… Continue Reading...
Lives Lived Well with Dani Kahil
I’m joined by Dani Kahi, Microsoft Business Applications practice lead at Empired, who shares the story behind one of his client projects, Lives Lived Well. How the Lives Lived Well CRM project started with a review of the high-level requirementsAdopting Scrum gradually during the course of the projectThe benefit of having a scrum master (or a project manager) who is familiar with ScrumDani’s… Continue Reading Neil...