App development and modernization have grown in importance as demand increases.
Key takeaways
With low-code app development and AI involvement on the rise, governance is now more critical.
Companies need to take an active, structured approach to governance to optimize app workflows.
Executive summary
For many organizations, app development and modernization have become a major priority, as customer and internal personnel demands evolve and legacy applications need to be efficiently created and rebuilt. To meet this increased demand, the Microsoft Power Platform and Power Apps provide a low-code development framework that enables users to develop and adapt apps with limited technical experience and minimal coding.
However, as low-code adoption grows and enthusiasm increases about citizen developers now having the ability to create and enhance apps, leadership commonly struggles with implementing effective governance guidelines. In addition, the growing prevalence of artificial intelligence within low-code app development requires companies to create more structured guidance on how to incorporate it effectively into workflows.
To address these challenges, companies need to take a more active, structured approach to creating and implementing governance strategies to allow for a consistent and successful approach to app development.
What governance means and why it matters
IT governance is a framework that ensures an organization’s IT resources and operations align with its business goals and objectives. It should encompass processes, policies and structures to manage and optimize IT investments, ensuring they support the overall business strategy. An effective IT governance approach considers:
- Risk management
- Regulatory compliance
- Performance measurement
- Resource management
Application governance is a structured framework to manage the development, deployment, management and use of IT applications within an organization. A successful application governance strategy includes:
- Development governance
- Deployment governance
- Security governance
- Data governance
- Operational governance
Effective governance results in a structured framework to manage the development, deployment and use of IT resources, services, applications and infrastructure effectively. An optimal governance framework provides:
- Improved compliance and security
- Optimized resource management
- Enhanced decision-making capabilities
- Increased transparency and accountability
- Confidence in the ability to adopt and scale
Ultimately, the value of effective governance implemented across IT services, applications and infrastructure includes:
- Risk mitigation
- Cost efficiencies
- Business alignment
- Performance measurement
- Confidence that systems are secure and compliant
What happens without sufficient governance
Insufficient IT and application governance can lead to several issues within an organization, which may have financial and legal implications, including:
- Lack of alignment with organizational goals
- Increased security risks
- Compliance issues
- Poor performance and reliability
- Inadequate risk management
The business impacts of insufficient IT and application governance can range widely and have significant repercussions, including:
- Misalignment between IT and business goals
- Elevated vulnerability to data breaches and cyberattacks
- Regulatory noncompliance
- Financial losses due to poor data quality and system performance
- Lack of transparency
- Ineffective decision making
- Reputational damage
- Lack of trust from customers, investors and markets
- Legal implications
The impacts of insufficient governance on IT and the applications themselves can also be extensive, including:
- Cost and resource increases to manage the lack of governance
- Security risks, vulnerabilities, data breaches and cyberattacks
- Operational inefficiencies and resource management issues
- Financial losses
- Data management challenges
- User access issues, such as unauthorized access and data issues
- Development and deployment delays
Power Platform governance pillars
Organizations should focus on four key pillars to establish effective governance for Power Platform app creation, development and deployment.
Governance is critical to ensure that organizations operate efficiently, comply with regulations and achieve their strategic objectives. Foundational aspects of governance include:
- Organizational practices and procedures
- Compliance and assurance laws, regulations and industry standards
Security is critical to the protection of an organization’s data, infrastructure, applications and resources, ensuring confidentiality, security, privacy, integrity and availability. Key elements include:
- Mandatory security and compliance procedures
- Corporate SDLC methodology and documentation
- Protection against vulnerabilities and threats
Risk management is critical as it involves identifying, assessing and mitigating risks that could affect the organization from various perspectives. Key activities include:
- Risk management methodology and governance framework development and implementation
- Risk identification, assessment and mitigation
- Periodic risk assessments—security, architecture, services, resources and applications
Compliance is a critical component of overall governance and security as it involves developing and implementing policies, procedures and controls to ensure adherence with security objectives, industry standards and legal requirements. Compliance considerations include:
- Implementation of IT general controls, application controls and business controls
- Continuous monitoring of standards, configurations, policies and formal complaints
- Implementation of internal and external audit plans
The road to effective governance has many critical steps. But those key employees who can lead an organization’s app creation and development from an unstructured, ungoverned state to a consistent approach aligned with business goals and regulatory and risk standards will be responsible for enhanced insight, operations, productivity and growth. That hero’s journey consists of three phases:
Phase 1
Starting from scratch: A world without governance
The ordinary world—IT processes are unstructured with a lack of clear governance.
The call to adventure—a significant event occurs, such as a data breach, compliance issue or an inefficiency that disrupts business operations.
Refusal of the call—users show resistance to change, fear of the unknown or lack of understanding of the benefits of IT governance.
Meeting with a mentor—an IT consultant or director provides guidance, tools and strategies to implement effective IT governance.
Phase 2
Gaining momentum: Awareness, action and implementation
Crossing the threshold—IT governance practices are implemented policies, procedures and frameworks.
Tests, allies and enemies—challenges emerge, such as resistance from staff, technical issues and budget constraints.
Approach to the innermost cave—preparation occurs for the most critical phase of the journey, including major audit, system overhaul and the implementation of a new governance framework.
The ordeal—a significant challenge or crisis may occur, such as a major system failure or a compliance audit.
Phase 3
A new horizon: The new world with governance in place
The reward—the company achieves a significant milestone, such as passing an audit, improving system efficiency or achieving compliance requirements.
The road back—normal operations are achieved, integrating the new governance practices into everyday business processes.
The resurrection—the final test: ensuring that the new IT governance practices are sustainable and can withstand future challenges.
A return to the ordinary world—operations are normal and standardized, but now with effective IT governance, leading to improved business operations, compliance and risk management.
The final three steps of Phase 3 support confident adoption and scaling of systems and applications.
Guardrails for citizen development
The emerging role of the citizen developer creates exciting new opportunities for every organization, but new capabilities can create new risks without effective governance. Implementing effective guardrails for citizen development enables enhanced efficiency and innovation with application development for citizen developers while providing confidence in the data, development and access security required by corporate IT, security and system administrators.
Relevant guardrails for citizen application development include:
Power Platform access guardrails
- Citizen developers have no persistent, elevated or administrative access.
- All application or environment creation requires a defined approval process.
- Adoption of a standard methodology or roles and permissions is enabled.
- All access configurations and settings are managed by a predefined Power Platform administrator.
- Secure access and provisioning processes are implemented across environments.
Power Platform development guardrails
- Secure environments are implemented with a defined environment strategy.
- A defined application lifecycle management strategy is implemented.
- Cost management processes are implemented to ensure app development doesn’t create capacity or licensing issues.
- Process and documentation of all development processes and approvals are implemented for citizen developers.
- Power Platform Pipelines and Azure DevOps are integrated.
- Citizen developers undergo training and awareness processes for application development standards.
Power Platform data and environment security guardrails
- All production environments are managed environments.
- All environments have data loss prevention policies enabled.
- Managed and environment routing is enabled.
- Security measures are implemented, including access, provisioning and policies.
- Power Platform security, audit and monitoring are enabled.
Establishing effective governance with RSM
Governance can be complex, and companies often need to turn to a trusted advisor for best practices, guidance and oversight. RSM has deep experience with Power Platform governance, with extensive offerings designed to meet the specific needs of clients ranging from small markets to enterprises. We understand specific industry-related and regulatory challenges and develop governance and security solutions based on those unique needs.
Our team builds on foundational governance and security from the Power Platform and scales solutions with enhanced capabilities from Microsoft. Our comprehensive approach provides leadership and IT with confidence that the Power Platform is governed and secure across IT, security and citizen developers.
Ready to get started on your governance journey? Contact us to learn more about the opportunities and value that our governance offerings can deliver for your organization.
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