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Effective application lifecycle management (ALM) practices ensure that applications are delivered efficiently, securely, and in alignment with organizational goals.
Don't treat low-code workloads as low complexity. You still benefit from formalizing the development and management of low-code workloads. Learn from other software development teams. Use a decision matrix to determine the level of formalization required based on the workload's complexity and criticality.
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Our primary guidance for ALM can be found in application lifecycle management (ALM) with Microsoft Power Platform. This article summarizes key recommendations and best practices for managing the application lifecycle in Power Platform. It provides an overview of essential strategies and tools to streamline development, deployment, and maintenance processes. For detailed guidance and other resources, refer to the ALM documentation.
This article outlines best practices for managing the application lifecycle in Power Platform.
Define objectives and key results
Before starting any development project, define clear objectives and requirements. Understand the business needs, set measurable goals, and outline the desired outcomes. Engaging stakeholders early in the process ensures that the application aligns with organizational priorities and user expectations.
Structure development processes
Key standards for development planning include prioritization based on business value, categorization to balance critical applications and productivity, and collaboration to ensure comprehensive input and clear task definition. Fostering fusion development culture can help build a foundation of shared ownership, mutual respect, and appreciation of high-quality work in your workload team. Streamline development processes by adopting methodologies like Agile, Scrum, and Kanban. These frameworks promote iterative development, continuous feedback, and adaptability, which are essential for managing complex projects. Frequent, small deployments, rather than large, infrequent ones, reduce risks and improve responsiveness. This approach allows for quicker feedback and adjustments, ensuring that applications remain aligned with user needs and business objectives. Learn more about standards for development planning.
Standardize tools and processes
The first step to optimize development practices is to standardize tools and processes. Use tools available to the platform instead of developing your own whenever possible. Provide training for all standardized tools and processes to ensure your teams use them efficiently.
Adopt a source code control system like Azure DevOps. Azure DevOps provides developer services for support teams to plan work, collaborate on code development, and build and deploy applications. Source control integration in Power Platform enables large teams to scale collaboration on a single solution, and it allows for tracking changes and maintaining version control directly within the platform. Learn more about Source control integration.
Standardize how your workload team writes, reviews, and documents code by using naming conventions and a style guide. A standard style makes collaboration easy and helps to on-board new developers. To work effectively, new developers need to know how the workload team operates. A style guide with clearly standards simplifies the training process.
Pipelines in Power Platform streamline the deployment experience for both makers and administrators by automating and standardizing the process. Pipelines facilitate the seamless deployment of software updates, ensuring that new features and fixes are delivered efficiently and consistently. For admins, pipelines reduce administrative burden, enhance governance by simplifying the review and approval process, and enable admins to detect and diagnose deployment failures.
Learn more about standardizing tools and processes.
Adopt continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) practices
Continuous integration is a software development practice that developers use to integrate software updates into a source control system at a regular cadence. As a developer, you can make small code changes, push these changes to a code repository, and get almost instantaneous feedback on quality, test coverage, and introduced bugs. This process helps you work faster and with more confidence and less risk. Continuous integration is a practice where source control systems and deployment pipelines are integrated to provide automated build, test, and feedback mechanisms for software development teams.
Pipelines in Power Platform aim to democratize ALM for Power Platform and Dynamics 365 customers by bringing ALM automation and CI/CD capabilities into the service in a manner that's more approachable for all makers, admins, and developers.
Solution checker performs a comprehensive, static analysis of your solution objects against a set of best practice rules. It provides actionable insights for predeployment quality checks, reducing errors and improving the success rate of changes.
Learn more about recommendations for continuous integration.
Ensure robust testing
Thorough testing is essential to identify and resolve issues before deployment. Implement automated testing for unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests to ensure comprehensive coverage. Additionally, conduct user acceptance testing (UAT) to validate that the application meets business requirements and user expectations.
Learn more about Test Engine.
Automate deployments
Automated deployments refer to the use of tools and processes to automatically build, test, and deploy applications without manual intervention. The benefits of automated deployments are numerous: they ensure consistency by applying the same deployment steps every time, reduce the risk of human error, and speed up the release cycle. Automated deployments also enable frequent, small updates, allowing for quicker feedback and iterative improvements.
Using Pipelines in Power Platform, you can easily configure automated deployment pipelines. This feature allows admins to set up the appropriate safeguards to govern and facilitate solution development, testing, and delivery across the organization.
Take advantage of gated deployments that require approvals, which add a layer of security and compliance to production changes.
Pipelines extensibility enable organizations to extend pipelines to meet their unique needs. For example, you can integrate post-deployment processes such as updating the backlog in Azure DevOps (ADO). Pipelines allow for such customizations through its extensibility features, enabling admins to insert custom steps and business logic at various points in the deployment process. This flexibility ensures that the deployment pipelines can be tailored to fit specific organizational workflows and requirements.
Monitor and optimize performance
Continuous monitoring of application performance helps identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement. Track performance metrics, user activity, and error logs by using tools like Power Platform Analytics, Power Platform Monitor, and Application Insights. Regularly review these insights to optimize application performance and enhance user experience.
The Deployment page in the Power Platform admin center provides a streamlined experience to help administrators navigate the complexities of managing Power Platform ALM workloads, including managing pipelines deployments at enterprise scale. Admins have visibility to all the deployments in their tenant and can approve deployment requests and troubleshoot issues.
Learn more about recommendations for designing and creating a monitoring system.
Plan for maintenance and support
Effective maintenance and support are vital for the long-term success of applications. Establish a support strategy that includes regular updates, bug fixes, and user support. Provide training and resources to users to ensure they can effectively use the application and report issues promptly.
Learn more about recommendations for safe deployment practices and establishing a support strategy.
Foster a culture of continuous improvement
Encourage a culture of continuous improvement by regularly reviewing and refining your development and deployment practices. Solicit feedback from users and stakeholders to identify areas for enhancement. Stay updated with the latest Power Platform features and best practices to ensure your applications remain current and effective.