Episodes

#139. Today’s guest is Emma Beckett, an experienced test professional who runs her own company, Fortitude 17, in London, UK. A professional footballer, Emma pursued a career in software testing, even though her first role in tech was in Desktop Support — hardware, not software! As you’ll hear, Emma is a Certified ISTQB Test Consultant and trained in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 and Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&SCM, CE, and HR. She is currently training on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central a...

#138. My guest today is Malin Martnes, a Microsoft MVP and MCT who runs her own company MaCoTra AS in Oslo, Norway. As you’ll hear, Malin doesn’t have any technical background on Dynamics 365 and Power Platform but she focuses on using these systems. In this episode, Malin talks about how she came to be a CRM consultant and set up her own consulting business. With years of experience as a user and trainer of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, she also discusses the integration of the HR solution...

137. Customery Academy is my online business through which I coach and train Microsoft customers and partners to build amazing, agile business applications. In this episode, I share a short history of Customery Academy, where it's at today, and my goals for 2023. Halfway through editing the episode, there's a surprise about just how many Customery Academy students have achieved their Professional Scrum Master certification thanks to my son's detective work. Resources Customery Academy Agile Fo...

136. My guest is Richard Hundhausen, a former Microsoft MVP and Regional Director, Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer, and co-creator of the Nexus Scaled Professional Scrum Framework. As you’ll hear, Richard doesn’t have a background in Dynamics 365 or Power Platform, but he’s no stranger to developing apps on Microsoft technology. In this episode, Richard talks about his experience working with Microsoft and how he got started with Scrum. Drawing from his over 30 years of software developmen...

Remy is starting to hate Scrum. He thinks we should use Kanban. And get rid of Product Owners. It's a shame, then, that Remy doesn't understand Scrum. And doesn't want to understand Scrum. Don't be like Remy. Resources Kanban Guide on Kanban University Professional Scrum with Kanban training from Scrum.org Support the showCONNECT 🌏 Amazing Applications 🟦 Customery on LinkedIn 🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES 🚀 Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business Apps 🏉 Scrum for Microsoft Bu...

#134. Today’s guest is Rishona Elijah, a Microsoft MVP (Business Applications) and Microsoft Certified Trainer who works as a Power Platform Trainer and Evangelist at Barhead Solutions in Sydney, Australia. She spends most of her time running training sessions and delivering events around Power Platform to business users to show them what they can achieve with this technology. In this episode, Rishona shares how she got started in Business Applications, how she uses her blog to help business us...

#133. Today’s guest is Michael Roth, a Power Platform consultant with Avanade who specializes in governance. In this episode, Michael walks us through how he keeps business apps amazing by working on only the fun stuff, i.e., governance and licensing, and understanding how users experience tech, specifically Power Platform. Michael also highlights the importance of governance and shares with us some of the biggest mistakes he sees organizations make when they don’t consider governance, what he...

132. Today’s guest is Andrew Ly, a Microsoft Business Applications Solutioning Lead at IBM Consulting in Australia. Andrew shares his 22 years of experience in the Microsoft space, including the type of work he does and the clients he works with. Andrew also gives his two cents on the low-code, no-code approach and talks about the demand of in a day trainings like App-in-a-Day sessions, Figma, and Power Platform applications. Show Highlights [02:48] Andrew’s background and what it’s like livi...

131. Today’s guest is Magnus Gether Sørensen, a Dynamics 365 Field Service expert at Delegate in Denmark. Magnus shares with us some of the Field Service projects he has worked on, as well as the interesting challenges that his customers have encountered using the application. Plus, Magnus talks about what’s new and next for Field Service and gives a few tips for teams implementing the application. Episode Highlights [0:30] Magnus’ background and his career in business applications [03:29] M...

#130. Sprint 1 is a magical, wonderful, beautiful thing. Find out how my messy, unstructured and un-estimated sprint 1 unfurled on a recent project to build a Power Platform app for a mid-size Microsoft customer in financial services. In-person conferences I didn't attend: Power Platform Conference Nordic Summit South Coast Summit Upcoming online conferences I'm presenting at: 2 Nov 2022 at Power Platform 24 4 Nov 2022 at New Zealand Business Applications Summit Learn how to qualify, pitch, p...

129. Learn how to use story point estimation to estimate the relative size of your Dynamics 365 or Power Platform application's requirements. You'll also learn: How to slice user stories into the right size for estimation and development How to decide on a standard user story for comparing other stories against when estimating How to use affinity estimation or planning poker to estimate the relative size of user stories How to derive the duration that describes how long it'll take to build ...

128. My wife, Natascha, is a faster trail runner than I am. Find out why estimating trail runs in units of time leads to misaligned expectations about how long it'll take for us to run the same trail together. You'll also learn: What story points are Three factors affecting the size of a requirement How to account for Hick's Law and Weber's Law when choosing an estimation scale The two estimation scales commonly used by agile teams The estimation scale my teams use This episode is the sec...

127. Do you really have to estimate the effort of building the Dynamics 365 or Power Platform apps you've been asked to build? If you work for a Microsoft partner, you probably do -- unless you work for a customer who doesn't care how much it costs or how long it takes. Find out how I approach estimation: How much and how long? Why estimates are notoriously inaccurate Estimating time doesn't work Estimating t-shirts doesn't either Estimates, forecasts and commitments This episode is the f...

126. Thanks for all your questions about estimating business applications. In this episode, I tackle four tricky situations when it comes to estimating Dynamics 365 and Power Platform applications. Should we re-estimate items in our backlog after we’re done because they were easier or harder than originally expected? — Tanika If we don’t complete a story by the end of the sprint, should we re-estimate how much work is remaining and split the story points across the sprints in which the work go...

#125. In this episode of Amazing Applications, Emil Hovgaard and Sheelan Bhana of EY Nordic Tech Hub share the story behind EY's PowerPost application and how it has made the General Ledger posting process easier and faster for the EY organization. Emil’s background and his role at the EY organization Sheelan’s background and his role at the EY organization Emil’s favorite Microsoft application Sheelan’s favorite Microsoft application What Emil did during his time in the EY strategy team in...

#124. When you're using an agile approach, like Scrum, how and when should you document your Dynamics 365 or Power Platform applications? After all, the Agile Manifesto says, "We value working software over comprehensive documentation", right? Before projects start, my teams document requirements in a product backlog, visualise the backlog in a user story map, and discuss the project during a solution blueprint review workshop. During sprints, we're writing unit tests, functional test cases, d...

#123. Learn how to use sprint goals to communicate to your stakeholders what your team has committed to building this sprint. If you can write your sprint goal in the subject line of the sprint review invitation to your stakeholders, and they stampede to accept your invite and beat down the door at sprint review, that's a great sprint goal. This episode includes examples of sprint goals for Dynamics 365 and Power Apps projects and answers sprint goal questions like: What's the benefit for havi...

#122. Ethan is a scrum master for a Power Platform team and his team is trying to build an app, but the customer's product owner hasn't shown up yet! What should he do? If your team's product owner is missing in action, in this episode you'll learn how to prevent this situation from happening, what to do to recover, and what could happen if you don't. Support the show CONNECT 🌏 Amazing Applications 🟦 Customery on LinkedIn 🟦 Neil Benson on LinkedIn MY ONLINE COURSES 🚀 Agile Foundations for Mi...

121. What's it like trying to manage 10 Microsoft 365 tenants with hundreds of environments, apps and citizen developers. Rene Modery, Power Platform Technical Lead shares his journey at global advertising company, WPP. Managing ten Microsoft 365 tenants for a global company with hundreds of subsidiaries. Power Platform environment policies and other guard rails to help makers. How do you know what apps have already been built and what problems have already been solved within a large organisa...

120. Hamish Sheild describes his five step Solution Mapping framework for using design thinking principles to define the requirements for complex Power Platform applications. Hamish has discovered Outlook's Board View and Neil is evaluating Motion for improving productivity. AppRising's Solution Mapping Framework What is a complex application? Observing users in their environment Customer journey mapping Swimlane business process mapping Are as-is process diagrams worth the effort? Creat...

119. What's the role of pre-sales in setting up Microsoft customers and partners for successful Dynamics 365 and Power Platform projects? Today's guest is Craig McGeough, Power Platform Pre-Sales Consultant at Incremental Group. Make sure you catch Craig's session, More than "selling the dream"! Why Pre-Sales is the key to Power Platform success, at Scottish Summit on Friday, 9 June 2022. Register for free today at ScottishSummit.com. What is pre-sales? Why do pre-sales consultants get paid s...

118. Ulrikke Akerbæk joins to discuss what's new with Power Pages (still called Power Apps Portals when we recorded this episode under NDA!). Discover some of the goodies Microsoft has been releasing for professional developers Power Pages and which portal template Ulrikke uses for almost every portals project. Announcing the preview of Microsoft Power Pages on the Power Apps blog. Ulrikke is the Low Code Platform Lead at Itera in Norway and has been a Microsoft MVP since 2021. Ulrikke is pre...

117. Chike Eduputa challenges citizen developers (and professional developers) to ask themselves five critical questions before building their next Power Platform or Dynamics 365 app. Chike Eduputa is a senior manager at Capgemini Invent in London where he specialises in digital strategy and transformation. He's presenting at Scottish Summit on 9 June with the topic "Build what matters: critical metrics for citizen developers". Register today for Scottish Summit. Chike invites us to answer fi...

#116. Dani Kahil interviews Andrew Bibby about a pivotal, multi-year Dynamics 365 business transformation project in financial services. Dani Kahil and Andrew Bibby are both Microsoft Business Applications MVPs. Dani is an independent consultant and online trainer specialising in requirements analysis and solution envisioning. Andrew Bibby is a founder of Proximo 3, a Microsoft training and advisory partner based in the UK. Dani and Andrew discuss: How Andrew's client engaged him as an adviso...