Develop a vision for adopting Microsoft Power Platform

"Why are we adopting Microsoft Power Platform?" is a common question for both businesses and technical stakeholders. If the answer is, "Our board [or C-level executives] told us to use low code," it might be more difficult for those businesses to achieve their expected outcomes. Similarly, organizations that start their adoption journey with a focus on governance and control often take longer to succeed than organizations that start their journey with commitment and a shared purpose for why low code is important to the organization.

Digital transformation is largely nontechnical, with the focus on cultural, organizational, and process change. This guidance outlines key steps to craft a vision that drives successful transformation. Defining a vision and setting clear objectives helps you achieve positive business outcomes and alignment with your organizational strategy.

Adopt a structured framework for your vision

Adopting Power Platform can transform businesses in many ways. A vision statement gives clear direction, aligns efforts, and motivates stakeholders. Creating a vision for low-code and AI adoption is a collaborative effort that involves input from various team members over several days to ensure it resonates with the entire organization.

When crafting a vision statement for low-code and AI adoption, involve a diverse group of stakeholders to ensure the vision is comprehensive and transformative. Key stakeholders should include not only IT professionals but also representatives from broader business teams. Engaging these broader business teams early in the process helps shape a vision that aligns with the organization's overall strategic goals, rather than being solely influenced by IT administrators' goals and constraints. This inclusive approach ensures that the vision statement reflects a holistic perspective, which helps drive transformation across the entire organization.

Typical stakeholders to involve when crafting your vision statements are Power Platform admins, cybersecurity teams, data and information governance teams, business analysts, department heads, end-users, and executive sponsors. Collective input fosters a shared commitment to the vision and helps ensure its successful implementation.

Craft a vision statement

Effective vision statements are composed of three key aspects: goals, reasons, and methods. This structured approach ensures that your vision isn't only inspiring but also actionable, guiding your team towards successful digital transformation.

Use this table to mix and match components to create cohesive and comprehensive vision statements that align with multiple goals, reasons, and methods. Your Power Platform adoption team should meet with the stakeholders, executives, and business leaders and discuss which motivations can help your business's cloud adoption.

Creating a vision for low-code adoption involves a structured framework that ensures alignment with organizational goals and drives successful implementation.

1. Begin by crafting a clear and inspiring vision that encapsulates the desired future state of low-code adoption within the organization. This vision serves as a guiding beacon to provide direction and motivation for the team.
2. Next, shift the focus to define specific objectives that align with the vision. These objectives represent the key themes and focus areas that need to be achieved to realize the vision.
3. Once the objectives are established, identify measurable key results to track progress and ensure that the objectives are met. These key results provide clear benchmarks for success and help in monitoring performance.
4. Finally, outline initiatives to deliver the key results and objectives. These initiatives are actionable steps and projects that drive progress towards the vision and ensure that the low-code adoption strategy is both comprehensive and actionable.

Follow this framework to align your organization's low-code adoption efforts with strategic goals to drive innovation and deliver business value.

Steps to define a vision statement

The vision statement is an aspirational declaration that encapsulates the desired future state of the organization. It serves as a guiding beacon to provide a clear direction for the strategy. The vision statement should be inspiring and actionable and reflect the organization's goals and aspirations.

Here are steps to guide you through the process of defining a meaningful vision statement:

1. Understand the purpose: The vision statement should describe something you want to achieve over the next 1-2 years. It should articulate the organization’s aspirations, values, and the impact it wants to make. Most vision statements provide direction and purpose to the organization on Power Platform.

2. Identify key components: A well-crafted vision statement typically includes the following components:

   • Goal:
     • What you aim to achieve.
     • Examples of common goals:
       • Empowerment and innovation
       • Digital transformation
       • Continuous improvement
       • Automation and efficiency
   • Reason:
     • The reason behind your goal.
     • Examples of common reasons:
       • To drive business value
       • To enhance productivity
       • To foster a culture of innovation
       • To improve processes
       • To achieve strategic goals
   • Method:
     • How you plan to achieve it.
     • Examples of common methods:
       • Using secure, low-code solutions
       • Using AI and automation
       • Providing tools and support
       • Implementing robust governance
       • Ensuring data cleanliness and security
       • Using data-driven decision-making

3. Engage stakeholders: Involve key stakeholders in the process to ensure that the vision resonates with everyone in the organization. This collaborative approach helps achieve buy-in and align the vision with the organizational values and goals.

4. Be clear and concise: The vision statement should be easy to understand and remember. Avoid jargon, keep it concise, and ensure it captures the essence of your aspirations.

5. Make it inspirational: The vision statement should inspire and motivate employees. It should reflect the organization's commitment to excellence and continuous improvement.

6. Reflect organizational values: Ensure that the vision statement aligns with the core values of your organization. It should reflect what the organization stands for and its commitment to its stakeholders.

7. Test and refine: Once you draft the vision statement, test it with a small group of stakeholders to gather feedback. Refine it based on the feedback to ensure it resonates well and accurately reflects the organization's aspirations.

For example, a vision statement might be: Transform our business by fostering collaboration and leveraging digital tools to enhance efficiency and customer engagement. This statement clearly outlines the goal, the reason behind it, and the method to achieve it.

Example vision statements

When creating a vision statement, it's useful to look at examples that show the goal, reason, and method. These examples can inspire your own vision statement and help start discussions within your team.

The purpose of these examples is to generate ideas about relevant goals, reasons, and methods for your organization. By reviewing examples, you can better understand how to structure your vision statement and see how it aligns with your organization's strategic objectives.

Empowerment and innovation

• Goal: Empower our workforce to innovate and create impactful solutions
• Why: To drive business value and foster a culture of innovation
• Method: By providing the necessary tools and support
• Vision statement: Empower our workforce to innovate and create impactful solutions by providing the necessary tools and support to drive business value and foster a culture of innovation.

Digital transformation

• Goal: Transform our business
• Why: To enhance productivity and improve processes
• Method: By adopting digital tools and processes
• Vision statement: Transform our business by adopting digital tools and processes that enhance productivity and improve processes.

Continuous improvement

• Goal: Foster a culture of continuous improvement and learning
• Why: To achieve strategic goals and improve processes
• Method: By implementing robust governance
• Vision statement: Foster a culture of continuous improvement and learning to achieve strategic goals and improve processes by implementing robust governance.

Automation and efficiency

• Goal: Streamline our processes and increase efficiency
• Why: To enhance productivity and drive business value
• Method: By using AI and automation
• Vision statement: Streamline our processes and increase efficiency by leveraging AI and automation to enhance productivity and drive business value.

Increased productivity and accelerated value

• Goal: Boost productivity and accelerate value delivery
• Why: To drive business value and achieve strategic goals
• Method: By ensuring data cleanliness and security
• Vision statement: Boost productivity and accelerate value delivery by ensuring data cleanliness and security to drive business value and achieve strategic goals.

Identify key results

Begin by identifying potential success measures for Power Platform adoption, using the collective insights of stakeholders within your organization. It's important to evaluate the success measures to ensure they align with the organizational vision and supporting strategies. Reflect on the question: If Power Platform is successful, what tangible benefits would you observe compared to the current state?

Key results are specific, measurable outcomes that indicate progress towards achieving the strategic objectives. Key results help in tracking performance and ensuring that the objectives are being met. They provide clear benchmarks for success and are often quantifiable. For example, a key result might be reducing operational costs by 15% or increasing employees that use Power Platform by 20%.

Imagine Power Platform is executed brilliantly and becomes a huge success. How might things be different from now? Consider the indicators of success: how will you know you succeeded? What changes, including behaviors, would signify success? For instance, you might observe reduced third-party license spend, increased business areas building their own solutions, and a reduced IT development backlog. Reflect on the potential shifts in behavior within your team, division, and organization. For example, business departments might start seeing IT as enablers and consult IT in their decisions on tools to use, or might use Power Platform to solve their own problems. Identify the current challenges or issues and explore the opportunities that might arise from addressing them. These insights inform your success measures.

Imagine Power Platform is executed brilliantly and becomes a huge success. How might things change? Consider the indicators of success: How do you know you succeeded? What changes, including behaviors, signify success?

For instance, you might see reduced third-party license costs, more business areas creating their own solutions, and a reduced IT development backlog. Reflect on the potential behavior shifts within your team, division, and organization. For example, business departments might view IT as enablers, consult IT when choosing tools, or use Power Platform to solve their own challenges. Identify current challenges and explore the opportunities that might arise from addressing them. These insights inform your success measures.

Here are some examples of measurable key results:

• Cultivate a low-code first mindset among employees, with ___% of employees trained and skilled in low-code development.
• Enable citizen developers through a standard onboarding process and training, increasing IT capacity by ___% and decreasing time to value by ___%.
• Achieve ___% increase in automated processes year over year.

Review common goals when adopting Power Platform to find inspiration for measurable key results based on why you're adopting Power Platform.

Align to organization direction

Aligning Power Platform adoption with the organizational direction requires a strategic approach to ensure that the platform's capabilities are fully used to support the company's overall goals and objectives.

It's important to understand your organization's vision, mission, and strategic goals. Engage with key stakeholders, such as executives and department heads, to gather insights into the long-term objectives and priorities. This approach ensures that your Power Platform strategy aligns with the broader organizational direction.

Discover objectives

Discover the key themes that drive success. Discuss the important aspects that must be addressed to ensure the desired outcomes. Understanding the underlying reasons for these themes builds a solid foundation for success.

Objectives are the key themes or focus areas that the strategy aims to achieve. They are broad, overarching goals that align with the organizational vision and priorities. Objectives provide direction and guide initiatives and key results. For example, an objective might be to enhance employee engagement or improve operational efficiency.

Once the objectives are defined, create a detailed roadmap that outlines the necessary steps to achieve these objectives. This roadmap should include milestones, timelines, and responsibilities for each initiative. Ensure that the roadmap remains flexible to accommodate changes and adjustments based on feedback and evolving business needs.

Here are some examples of objectives:

• Develop a comprehensive data governance framework that ensures data quality, security, and compliance with relevant regulations.
• Establish an inclusive culture of innovation and experimentation.
• Create a culture of collaboration that drives employee satisfaction and tangible outcomes.

Review common goals for adopting Power Platform to find inspiration for objectives based on why you're adopting Power Platform.

Define initiatives

Next, outline the initiatives that need to be implemented to achieve the identified success measures. Initiatives are the specific actions or projects that must be implemented to achieve the objectives. They outline what needs to be done in the immediate term, and in the next year and three years. Initiatives are actionable steps that drive progress towards the key results and objectives.

Here are some examples of initiatives:

• Develop and publish a catalog of reusable app templates and components to help makers build with a reliable, reusable toolkit.
• Identify champion candidates and create incentives for makers, champions, and departments to participate in your internal Power Platform Champions program.
• Create a hub for makers that includes onboarding collateral, development guidelines, self-guided learning, and success stories.

Engage stakeholders

Engage and enable stakeholders by onboarding key individuals and building a coalition of support for your Power Platform strategy. Provide training, resources, and ongoing communication to ensure that everyone is aligned and committed to the strategy.

Monitor and refine

Continuously monitor the progress of your Power Platform adoption strategy against the defined success measures. Gather feedback from stakeholders and make necessary adjustments to the strategy to ensure it aligns with the organizational direction.

Next steps

Understanding the objectives and goals behind your organization's Power Platform adoption can help you achieve more successful business outcomes. Review common objectives, goals, and initiatives to help drive alignment with your stakeholders and create positive business outcomes.

Learn more: Review common objectives and goals

Measuring business value in Power Platform is an important aspect of ensuring success and return on investment. Learn methods and tools to measure business value, how to measure value at scale, and how to communicate business value to your stakeholders.

Learn more: Measure and communicate business value