From experiment to structural efficiency: how RVA embedded Power Platform with governance and a thoughtful approach

A real-world story about how a thoughtful governance approach and strong collaboration between business and IT lead to repeatable and scalable efficiency gains.

1. About the client

The National Employment Office (RVA) is a federal government organisation responsible for, among other things, unemployment benefits and career breaks.

Within RVA, Digital Workplace is responsible for supporting employees with digital tools that make daily processes more efficient. The organisation works in a shared Microsoft 365 tenant together with other government services, which calls for clear agreements around management, security and governance.
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2. The challenge

At RVA, Power Platform was already being cautiously explored within IT and Digital Workplace. Some IT developers were building applications, and citizen developers, where non-IT profiles build applications themselves, were experimenting with the platform independently.

Those first initiatives above all confirmed the potential of Power Platform for optimising supporting processes. At the same time, the awareness grew that, in order to deploy this platform further and more broadly, a clear framework was needed.

Moreover, RVA worked within a shared Microsoft 365 tenant with other government services. That made it extra important to:

• Gain better insight into existing applications.

• Make clear agreements about environments and responsibilities.

• Consciously position Power Platform as a solution for supporting processes, not for core business applications or sensitive case files.
  

The challenge therefore was not a lack of vision, but the next logical step: how do we make Power Platform ready for sustainable growth, with room for citizen development and with sufficient grip on management, security and continuity?

The question was therefore not only how we make Power Platform manageable, but also how we move from isolated experiments to a structural way of working: detecting, analysing, prioritising and developing use cases in a repeatable way. That second half, alongside governance, would later become an important part of the CoE operation.
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“Power Platform offers many possibilities, but for us it was important to define very clearly what we would and would not use it for. We want to give citizen developers room to experiment, but at the same time ensure an approach that remains manageable in the long term.”

- Inneke Hemmeryckx, Head of Digital Workplace, RVA

3. Our approach

Together with RVA, The Flow developed a governance strategy, starting from workshops with:

• IT management

• Enterprise architecture

• Digital Workplace
  

Through those workshops we also carried out targeted use-case detection, so that RVA evolves from ‘a few good ideas’ to a repeatable approach.

During the workshops it was first sharply determined what Power Platform is and is not intended for within RVA, namely: deployment for supporting processes and not for use with core business data or case handling.
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From there, a clear framework was developed around:

• Governance and responsibilities

• Environment strategy

• Data security and compliance

• Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

• The role of citizen developers and IT
  

To complement RVA’s internal knowledge and capacity, external expertise was deliberately chosen via The Flow.

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“When an organisation takes its first steps with the Power Platform, we always look first at why and how the platform can best be deployed. Together with RVA we thus determined the strategy to deploy Power Platform as a tool for every employee to increase their efficiency and help RVA become a digital and agile organisation. We then mapped that strategy to a scalable governance framework.”

- Kristof Leyssens, Team Manager Intelligent Apps & Automation, The Flow

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From governance to a structural approach around efficiency

The run-up with governance is deliberately the starting point at RVA: it provides clear agreements and a consistent technical setup. But governance is only one half of the story. The other half is that, through the CoE and a fixed way of working around use cases, detection, analysis, prioritisation and development, we ensure that Power Platform requests do not end up as one-off solutions, but lead to structural efficiency gains.

4. The solution in detail

Power Platform Governance & Center of Excellence

A central pillar in the solution is the Center of Excellence (CoE), which meets every two weeks and is structurally deployed to manage and further develop Power Platform.
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The CoE operation is split into two types of meetings:

• Governance sessions

• Use-case and demand-driven sessions
  

“To make the adoption of the Power Platform succeed, it is essential to monitor the use of the platform, inspire users and help them develop their use cases. We thus brought a core team of business and IT stakeholders together in a Center of Excellence, which meets every two weeks around the evolution of the governance model on the one hand (which solutions are made, who builds them, which data is used, etc.), and the handling of employees’ automation requests on the other hand.

This way we support them in automating small processes independently, or we work out more complex processes together with their IT team.”

- Kristof Leyssens, Team Manager Intelligent Apps & Automation, The Flow

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Monitoring & insight

With the help of the Power Platform CoE Starter Kit, a dashboard was set up that provides insight into:

• Active applications

• Citizen developers and IT developers

• New initiatives

• Security and compliance points of attention
  

The Flow supports RVA not only technically, but also in interpreting data and determining where adjustment is needed.

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Evolving governance

We developed a governance framework and then implemented it on their environments. It will continue to evolve depending on the needs of the users/organisation. It is not a static whole.

Concrete themes that are continuously adjusted:

• Environment strategy

• ALM & Solutions

• Service accounts

• New technologies and concepts (e.g. Copilot Studio)
  

Use cases & citizen developer coaching

The CoE also acts as a coaching and decision-making body:

• Users or citizen developers can submit use cases

• They present their idea or problem during the CoE

• Together it is considered:  

• does the use case fit within governance?

• who builds it: citizen developer, IT or external?

• which technical and security conditions apply?

Citizen developers build their solution in a development environment, but the transition to production always happens via IT.

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From isolated ideas to a structural efficiency approach

What strengthens this approach is that use cases do not end up as one-off solutions, but become part of an ongoing operation.

Within RVA this happens through a combination of:

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Use-case detection and prioritisation
Through targeted workshops, use cases are identified and structured, with a focus on solutions that:

• deliver a clear efficiency gain

• and are quickly achievable
  

Development tailored to complexity
Depending on the use case, solutions are developed by:

• citizen developers

• internal IT

• or, for more complex cases, together with The Flow
  

Adoption and communication
Together with RVA, attention is paid to communication and guidance, so that solutions are also effectively used within the organisation. RVA takes an important role in this.

Solutions are moreover developed in an agile way, so that there is continuous adjustment and improvement to guarantee successful adoption.

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Ongoing follow-up and improvement
The CoE ensures that solutions and approaches are continuously followed up, monitored and further developed.

The real added value lies not only in governance, but in the collaboration between business and IT within the CoE, where processes are discussed, improved and translated into solutions that are effectively supported by users.

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5. Impact & results

Thanks to the governance approach and the Center of Excellence:

• RVA has insight into what is being built within Power Platform

• There is a clear distinction in environments, rules and responsibilities

• Citizen development is encouraged and guided, without risks

• Automations are manageable, scalable and secure

Governance supports this by bringing consistency, but it is the CoE operation that helps realise efficiency faster and more consistently.

In addition, the structural CoE operation ensures that efficiency is not a matter of isolated initiatives, but is continuously taken up and improved via use cases.

A concrete example is an automation around onboarding and role changes, in which:

• Information is automatically distributed to supporting services

• Manual emails and follow-up disappear

• The process today runs successfully in production
  

“Thanks to the Center of Excellence, we have a much better view of what happens within Power Platform. We can make more targeted decisions, guide citizen developers and at the same time maintain control over security and management.”

- Inneke Hemerryckx, Head of Digital Workplace, RVA

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6. Next steps

The governance operation continues to evolve. On the roadmap are, among others:

• An internal skill matrix

• Further refining security guidelines

• Continuous optimisation of processes and guidance of citizen developers
  

“We don’t get standard advice, but well-founded recommendations that take into account our organisation, our employees and our shared tenant.”

- Inneke Hemmeryckx, Head of Digital Workplace, RVA

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Discover how a governance approach and CoE make the difference. Give us a shout. We are happy to think along with you.

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