#102. Bruce Sithole's team at 265 Mechanix built a Power Portal application for a business to business lender that earned some serious kudos for his customer. Find out how in this episode of Amazing Applications. We also cover: Starting your own Microsoft partner business What is takes to achieve FastTrack Recognized Solution Architect Which is better: FTRSA award or MVP award? Building amazing Power Power applications What night to release a new deployment Using feature flags in our application...
Sep 29, 2021•30 min•Ep. 102
#101. DynamicsCon starts next week. Lipi Sarkar is presenting two sessions at DynamicsCon and joins me to share the highlights from her presentations as well as her book, Build a Digital Future. Resources Register for DynamicsCon Lipi Sarkar on LinkedIn Samit Saini and Eric McKinney on LinkedIn Building a Digital Future by Lipi Sarkar and Vinny (Amazing affiliate link) South Coast Summit conference Scottish Summit conference Support the show CONNECT 🌏 Amazing Apps website 🟦 Customery on Linked...
Sep 16, 2021•16 min•Ep. 101
#100. Are you looking for better ways to manage your Dynamics 365 and Power Platform requirements in Azure DevOps? Join me and Dani Kahil as we explore what it takes to master your requirements. Why use Azure DevOps to manage requirements? Structuring requirements into epics, features and user stories Using a definition of ready to manage your backlog Is requirements approval an anti-pattern? Using different types of items in Azure DevOps Choosing an Azure DevOps process: Scrum or Agile? Adding ...
Sep 13, 2021•24 min•Ep. 100
#99. We all know that good form design is important especially when we're building model-driven Power Apps and Dynamics 365 apps. But what actually makes a good form design? Join me as Mary Ann Castro shares her secrets of effective form design from her upcoming presentation at DynamicsCon. Resources Mary Ann Castro on LinkedIn Register for DynamicsCon Special mention to Andrew Butenko , Amey Holden and Dian Taylor Support the show CONNECT 🌏 Amazing Apps website 🟦 Customery on LinkedIn 🟦 Neil...
Sep 03, 2021•24 min•Ep. 99
#98. Hey everyone, Dian Taylor is here! Dian is a two-time MVP and a director of pre-sales at RSM US. She's presenting, 'Getting Started with Power Virtual Agents' at DynamicsCon on 20 September. So I invited Dian onto the Amazing Apps show to tells us all about Power Virtual Agents and give us a sneak peek into her presentation. We discuss the summer weather in Florida and the easy life of pre-sales as well as some serious topics such as how amazing chatbots can provide an awesome customer expe...
Aug 24, 2021•19 min•Ep. 98
#97. I share five reasons why I think you should avoid analysis in advance when you're building Dynamics 365 and Power Platform applications. My five top reasons: Peak ignorance. You're analyzing the requirements during the period when your stakeholders know least about Microsoft business applications and your analysts know least about their needs. Priority categorization. Your requirement specification doesn't order the requirements by business value. Over-engineering. Your requirements are lik...
Aug 16, 2021•20 min•Ep. 97
#96. I continue the deeper dive into the role of the Product Owner with advanced Product Owner questions. This episode covers: Can the product owner role be combined with scrum master or developer? Which product owner certification that I recommend? Making decisions about the product backlog, Whether the Product Owner needs to be technical, What's the difference between a product owner and a project manager? Whether the product owner has to accept the developers' increments in the sprint review?...
Jul 26, 2021•20 min•Ep. 96
#95. I continue the deeper dive into the role of the Product Owner, who is responsible for maximizing the impact of the application that the scrum team is building. And I think our product owners in Power Platform and Dynamics 365 projects have a couple of twists compared to product owners on other scrum teams. This episode covers 10 myths about Product Owners. Resources Customery Academy Amazing Applications podcast page on LinkedIn Amazing Applications podcast page on Podchaser Scrum for Micro...
Jul 13, 2021•18 min•Ep. 95
#94. I dive deeper into getting into the right mindset to build applications. In the last episode, we looked at ten potential candidates for the product owner role in our scrum teams building Power Platform and Dynamics 365 applications. In this episode, we're going to continue the product owner topic by helping the product owner set a product goal. This episode covers: The 2020 edition of the Scrum Guide's reference to Product Goals. Where Product Goals sit in the overall goal hierarchy. Bringi...
Jul 05, 2021•14 min•Ep. 94
#93. I dive deeper into getting into the right mindset to build applications, including using the Scrum agile approach. This episode covers: Why the Product Owner is the most critical role in the Scrum team. The accountability of the Product Owner. Which type of person within an organisation makes the best Product Owner. Resources Product Mastery - from good to great product ownership, by Geoff Watts Agile Product Management with Scrum, by Roman Pichler Professional Scrum Product Owner, by Don M...
Jun 28, 2021•25 min•Ep. 93
#92. Join me with Gail Mercer-MacKay, the founder and CEO of Mercer-MacKay. They have a unique position in the Microsoft ecosystem: they help Microsoft partners clarify their marketing message and produce compelling digital content that inspires Microsoft customers to take action. Our discussion covers: Why Mercer-MacKay decided to Deploy Microsoft business applications internally. Gail's perspective on choosing a Microsoft business applications partner. The process of building the Minimal Viabl...
Jun 21, 2021•38 min•Ep. 92
#91. Join me with Reza Rad, the founder and CEO of RADACAD providing Power BI training and consultancy services to thousands of Microsoft customers and partners every year. Reza's list of achievements is pretty embarrassing. He's not just a 10 times Microsoft MVP. He's a Microsoft Regional Director. He's written over 15 books on data analytics, in addition to dozens of courses on RADACAD. He's been a speaker at dozens of industry conferences and used all of that experience to organize and host t...
Jun 14, 2021•49 min•Ep. 91
#90. Join me with Stephen Handley,founder, CEO and chief architect at Fin365, an application development business serving financial services professionals in Australia. Fin365 was born out of need for better data management practice management platform that Stephen identified in his own financial planning business. Our discussion covers: How Stephen's background of being a software developer and a financial adviser could be the perfect blend of expertise for his application development business....
Jun 08, 2021•44 min•Ep. 90
#89. Join me with Mohammad Mohsin Khalid. And he's the founder, CEO and chief architect at Imperium Dynamics. He and his team built a Power Portal to support a million constituents booking their COVID test appointments, and they did it in less than 100 hours. Our discussion covers: The physical logistics of drive-up COVID testing for thousands of people. Why custom scheduling was used instead of the inbuilt scheduling functionality of the Dynamics Healthcare Accelerator on Power Platform The uni...
May 31, 2021•42 min•Ep. 89
#88. Join me with Brendan Eger, an Associate Director of Information Systems and Analytics at Partners In Health in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Brendan's story is a fascinating journey of a small, bootstrapped team adopting the Power Platform. Our discussion covers: Knowledge sharing within teams - invest in team members in a semi-formal structured environment, sharing what they've just learned with their coworkers. Overcoming the end-user learning curve moving from Excel to Power BI....
May 25, 2021•40 min•Ep. 88
#87. Join me with Mandar Zope, a principal consultant at Slalom Consulting from Seattle. Mandar has been busy building business applications that are being used by a hundred thousand users at a global oil and gas company. Our discussion covers: The user adoption approach used to train and communicate with thousands or tens of thousands of users at a time, using Power Apps. Building data import automation using Power Automate. Approaches to taking a big enterprise portfolio of applications and br...
May 17, 2021•35 min•Ep. 87
#86. Join me with Paul Heisterkamp, a Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations solution architect and developer at GWS in Germany. Paul shares with us his story of a multi-country Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations project for an international automotive parts supplier. Our discussion covers: Phasing long-term international enterprise projects. Adopting an agile approach to ERP. Dealing with the challenges of remote working. How they bet on the first version of Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations ru...
May 11, 2021•36 min•Ep. 86
#85. Join me with Julie Yack and Julian Sharp as we discuss my question, "Are Microsoft certifications causing projects to fail?" Julie Yack is a founder and the chief operations officer at Colorado Technology Consultants. She's an author, a trainer, a solution architect, and an MVP. Julian Sharp is the founder of Ready 365. He recently received an MVP award and is best known as a prolific Microsoft trainer. Over the past 10 or 15 or 20 years, he's trained thousands of people in Dynamics 365 and...
May 03, 2021•41 min•Ep. 85
#84. Join me with Britt Damkjaer, customer excellence and change management coach and the founder of bd relations in Copenhagen, Denmark as we discuss change management and business applications and other insights from her experience as a product owner and coach. I like how Britt is expanding our minds to thinking not just about our users, but also our end customers and the impact that our business applications are going to have on the customer experience, too. Our discussion covers: The signifi...
Apr 26, 2021•41 min•Ep. 84
#83. Bonus extended interview with Marc Schweigert, principal program manager on the Power Customer Advisory Team at Microsoft as we talk about Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) approaches suited to novices and citizen developers through to professional developers. In this bonus extended interview, I ask Marc 10 rapid-fire "would you rather" questions: Drink Australian wine or Australian beer? Use Scrum or SureStep? Include comments in your code or write unambiguous code? Call it a table or...
Apr 21, 2021•10 min•Ep. 83
#82. Join me with Marc Schweigert, a programme manager on the Power Customer Advisory Team at Microsoft as we talk about Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) approaches suited to novices and citizen developers through to professional developers. A healthy application lifecycle process is critical if you're going to build amazing, agile, Dynamics 365 and Power Apps platform applications. I think it's great that Microsoft is finally providing more prescriptive advice for how to achieve healthy A...
Apr 19, 2021•56 min•Ep. 82
#81. Gustaf Westerlund CIO and founder at CRM-Konsulterna asks, "How can we get customers to really understand that an agile approach is best for them?" Agile is built on trust. Trust that the developing partner will do their best. But if the customer has been burned many times before, this can be hard to gain. And half-hearted trust becomes half-hearted agile." I dive into the detail and expand on my top three tips: Know Scrum - get your business development team members trained as well as your...
Apr 05, 2021•19 min•Ep. 81
#80. Richard asks about working with user stories in a Dynamics 365 or Power Platform agile project. I'll spend this episode talking about user stories on Dynamics 365 and Power Platform projects and I’ll share three traps to avoid when working with user stories when building Power Platform and Dynamics 365 apps using Scrum. The first trap is the level of detail. The second trap is splitting and combining stories. The third trap is managing changes to the backlog of users stories. Resources User...
Mar 29, 2021•25 min•Ep. 80
#79. Bonus extended interview with CJ Brooks, a Fundraising and Engagement Architect at Mission CRM as we talk about how Mission CRM closed the doors on their consulting practice to focus on building the Mission CRM fundraising and engagement application for nonprofit organizations. In this bonus episode, CJ and I try to solve the Elon Musk problem in data verse. Resources CJ Brooks on LinkedIn MISSION CRM on LinkedIn MISSION website Demo: Dynamics 365 Fundraising & Engagement Support the sh...
Mar 24, 2021•16 min•Ep. 79
#78. Join me with CJ Brooks, a Fundraising and Engagement Architect at Mission CRM as we talk about how Mission CRM closed the doors on their consulting practice to focus on building the Mission CRM fundraising and engagement application for nonprofit organizations. Make sure you stick around until the end of this episode to find out how you can get access to the bonus episode with Neil Benson and CJ Brooks extended interview. Our discussion covers: How Mission CRM took a step back and pivoted t...
Mar 22, 2021•39 min•Ep. 78
#77. Bonus extended interview with Bert Wijns, a Global Solution Strategy Architect a Microsoft and co-founder of Power Accelerate as we talk about the tool he created which allows you to take a screenshot of a legacy application or database schema and have a Power App built in a few minutes with the legacy data migrated. Sound crazy? Listen on to hear more about Bert Wijns' Power Accelerate. Resources Bert Wijns on LinkedIn Power Accelerate on LinkedIn Power Accelerate website Power Apps Screen...
Mar 17, 2021•17 min•Ep. 77
#76. Join me with Bert Wijns, a Global Solution Strategy Architect a Microsoft and co-founder of Power Accelerate as we talk about the tool he created which allows you to take a screenshot of a legacy application or database schema and have a Power App built in a few minutes with the legacy data migrated. Sound crazy? Listen on to hear more about Bert Wijns' Power Accelerate. Make sure you stick around until the end of this episode to find out how you can get access to the bonus episode with Nei...
Mar 15, 2021•40 min•Ep. 76
#75. Join me with Haniel Croitoru, Associate Director of Protiviti, a Technology Consulting solutions provider in Toronto, Canada. Haniel shares a story about one of his power platform projects for a not-for-profit client and shares the lessons learned about multi-language deployments, implementation approach, executive sponsorship, and change in user adoption. Our discussion covers: The importance of strong project sponsorship in projects that drive a lot of organisational change. Refining know...
Mar 08, 2021•31 min•Ep. 75
#74. Join me with Vasco Duarte who runs Oikosofy a coaching company in Finland and is also behind the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. Vasco is the author of a fascinating book, #NoEstimates. Vasco and I chat about the challenges of estimating complex business application software, particularly in the CRM and ERP domains, and how the No Estimates movement and the method covered in his book can help business applications teams construct collaborative contracts with their customers and never deliver ...
Mar 01, 2021•45 min•Ep. 74
#73. Daryl LaBar and Jonas Rapp, co-hosts of the XrmToolCast join Neil Benson to answer the questions about how to document complex systems when asked to "devise a roadmap for migrating a Dynamics CRM 2013 and a CRM 2016 environment into a single Dynamics 365 online environment ." A documentation tools masterclass from two experts in the field who discuss what tools to use for on-premise implementations when Snapshot! for Dynamics 365 can’t be used. Resources Daryl LaBar on LinkedIn Jonas Rapp o...
Feb 23, 2021•39 min•Ep. 73
