Year one of a Power Platform CoE is primarily a technical project. Environments get structured. DLP policies get designed. The CoE kit gets deployed. ALM pipelines get built. The governance infrastructure takes shape.
Year two is primarily a cultural project. The infrastructure exists. The question is whether people use it, whether makers follow the governance, whether leadership continues to invest, and whether the practice grows in quality rather than just in volume.
What to stop doing in year two
Some things that made sense in year one do not make sense in year two:
- Reviewing every app for compliance: as maker numbers grow, manual review of every solution does not scale. Design risk-based automated compliance checks that catch the high-risk issues and let low-risk solutions proceed with lighter-touch governance.
- Doing everything yourself: the CoE team cannot scale as fast as the maker community. Year two is when you build the maker community into a self-supporting network — experienced makers helping newer ones, peer review rather than CoE review for low-risk solutions.
- Tracking every metric: you probably started year one tracking everything. By year two, identify the five metrics that actually tell you whether the programme is healthy and focus on those.
What to start doing in year two
- Showcase regularly: a monthly or quarterly showcase where teams present what they have built is one of the highest-impact things a CoE can do for adoption and culture. Success is contagious.
- Run office hours consistently: a standing weekly or fortnightly slot where makers can bring questions and problems. The CoE team does not need to have all the answers — experienced makers in the community can contribute.
- Measure and report impact: in year two you should have enough data to show real business impact — hours saved, error rates reduced, cycle times improved. This is what keeps leadership engaged and the programme funded.
- Invest in the next tier of makers: year one produced your first cohort of capable makers. Year two should develop some of them into maker advocates — people who help others build well, not just build themselves.
The culture shift that matters most
In year one, governance is something the CoE does to makers. In year two, governance should be something makers do themselves because they understand why it matters — and because the tools and processes make doing it right easier than doing it wrong.
The goal of year two is not better governance. It is makers who govern themselves well because the culture has shifted — not because the CoE is watching.
Measure cultural indicators in year two: the number of makers who proactively follow the maker request process, the number who attend office hours and community sessions voluntarily, the number who help other makers in the Teams channel. These are leading indicators of a governance culture that will sustain itself.
