Shane Young on Power Platform Democratization

02/24/22 • 43 min

Podcast Episode! S2E3: Shane Young

James and I talked to Shane Young for the third episode in our second season: “Power Platform Democratization”. Shane is the founder of PowerApps911, helping clients with Power Platform training and custom app builds in the Microsoft universe. He’s a fun guy to talk to, and he’s one of the most informative people you’ll ever follow on Twitter or YouTube.

Highlights

Shane is a “Microsoft nerd” — in love with it since the ‘90s
Prior to PowerApps911, he ran SharePoint911. I’m sensing a formula.
Digression into Ted Lasso
Shane says he’s seeing about a 50/50 blend of IT folks and business folks in the Power Platform world
Power Apps/Power Platform has 530+ connectors (as of the time of recording — more now!)
Shane said “You’ll appreciate this as nerds” to James and I — and yeah. We did. :)
Major customer moment(s) for Shane: getting past simply reproducing a paper form, and really unlocking the tech things that platforms add.
Shane looks forward to continuous democratization of technology.

Money Quotes

Shane

You’ve got to be able to put firm rules around this thing [Power Apps] before you go.

Paul

People don’t realize how flexible they are, when it comes time to explain their actions to a machine.

The tragedy of IT is that some people [who only incidentally use tech] feel dumb because they can’t figure out the tools.

Podcast Episode! S2E3: Shane Young

Highlights

Shane is a “Microsoft nerd” — in love with it since the ‘90s
Prior to PowerApps911, he ran SharePoint911. I’m sensing a formula.
Digression into Ted Lasso
Shane says he’s seeing about a 50/50 blend of IT folks and business folks in the Power Platform world
Power Apps/Power Platform has 530+ connectors (as of the time of recording — more now!)
Shane said “You’ll appreciate this as nerds” to James and I — and yeah. We did. :)
Major customer moment(s) for Shane: getting past simply reproducing a paper form, and really unlocking the tech things that platforms add.
Shane looks forward to continuous democratization of technology.

Money Quotes

Shane

You’ve got to be able to put firm rules around this thing [Power Apps] before you go.

Paul

People don’t realize how flexible they are, when it comes time to explain their actions to a machine.

The tragedy of IT is that some people [who only incidentally use tech] feel dumb because they can’t figure out the tools.

Previous Episode

Em D'Arcy on Meeting Demand Through Governance

Podcast Episode! S2 E2: Em D’Arcy

James and I talked to Em D’Arcy for the second episode in our second season: “Meeting Demand Through Governance”. This was a refreshing talk for me — I have issues to work through with the word “governance”, and Em is helping me walk the walk and do the work to get there. It’s great material along the course of our second season theme of “Simplifying the Multi-Vendor Mess”, as part of simplification can be distributing power to those who need it.

Note that since we recorded this episode, Em has updated their personal pronouns to “she/they”. During the recording James and I spoke in terms of a previous preferred name and “she/her” — this blog post will retcon our usage to “Em” and “they”.

Highlights

Sr. Solutions Architect and MVP in the MS Power Platform space
Originally from Ireland, now tooling around Philly
Skydiving accident survivor! (Let’s not explore their PTSD)
I think Em nicely turns around the “governance” idea to a positive spin — not an easy task for my pre-existing notions!

Em just casually crushing it

3 different types of apps on Power Platform:
1) one-person utility kind of thing, just does a thing for ME — a test app or simple calculator
2) department apps, 10–50 people, not mission-critical. Monitored by department, not IT
3) mission-critical, taking/using data from ERP systems, IT involved and governing
Note the COE Starter Kit: “a collection of components and tools that are designed to help you get started with developing a strategy for adopting and supporting Microsoft Power Platform”

Money Quotes

The whole point of the Power Platform is to give back time, money, and resources to the company.

Governance is about making a safe space for makers to create.

[Give] people their own dedicated space...and encouragement to go out and run things.

James

What we’re wresting with is: what is the best way to curate data and provide an on-rails experience?

Paul

It’s not the thing, it’s how people feel about the thing. That’s the actual battle.

Next Episode

Platforms and App Delivery with Matthias Steiner

James and I talked to Matthias Steiner for the fourth episode in our second season. He took to the SAP Community blogs to defend low-code/no-code (and later reiterated at diginomica), and we took notice. We’d been fans previously because of his influence on the various cloud platform gyrations at SAP, and of course because he’s a willing Twitter prognosticator. We dove in on low/no-code and other platform things, for a great time.

Highlights

17 years at SAP — 10ish as software architect for SAP customer development, rest in the SAP Cloud Platform/BTP space
Now Chief Product Officer at Neptune Software, doing all kinds of low-code shenanigans

The triathlete in his business attire

prefers “rapid app development” to “low/no code” as a descriptor of the modern tool evolution
Nobody says “Yes!” to the question “Is your IT department delivering all the apps your business needs to go forward?”
Says — and we agree — SAP is best at the boring-but-hard stuff.
NOT a blockchain guy. :)
Believes it’s all about culture. We agree.

Money Quotes

Matthias

“Platform” means you need to see MANY people benefit from it. Where are the partner stories?

IT needs to change from being the one that delivers to the one that empowers.

James

Amazing developers can go in and build apps, but if you look at it from a budget perspective...[after a project cycle] what do we have? Fairly pretty CRUD applications. Look at all we’ve left on the table.

Paul

As a business user, you should not want code, you should want applications.