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> What's something that corporate IT is obsessed with? Making sure the business isn't creating shadow IT and developing enterprise applications. Though with Po

> What's something that corporate IT is obsessed with? Making sure the business isn't creating shadow IT and developing enterprise applications. Though with Power Apps and Power BI all of that starts showing up on IT's dashboards (Azure Portal; Microsoft 365). Microsoft hasn't been great about messaging that, but unlike hidden Excel files in random network shares or VB+Access apps in PCs in cupboards, that "amazing CI/CD tool for enterprise applications" also means that it can't just live in the shadows and will get seen by IT. If anything, I've seen "citizen developers" turn away from Power BI/Power Apps precisely because their M365/Azure admins are too micro-managing to use the tools for what they were intended for and such people just go back to that Excel+VBA macros on a network share in a broom closet. Which yes, gets back to Microsoft is trying too hard to meet everyone's use case and in forcing Power BI/Power Apps into M365/Azure they've trapped out some of the "I just need to get stuff done" "citizen devs" because some IT departments are so scared of shadows that they are preemptively blocking one of the tools they could use to keep an eye on it better. It's a lovely irony.

tomnipotent 5y ago
> I've seen "citizen developers" turn away from Power BI/Power Apps precisely because their M365/Azure admins are too micro-managing I've been on both sides of the IT gatekeeping story, and enjoy the irony that we've gone full circle from the mass exodus of business users to SaaS to circumvent gatekeeping only for the success of those tools to introduce centralized management to appeal to more IT organizations.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Deleted a comment above where I posted exactly what WorldMaker said. Agree 100%! IMHO, the key is change control. Programmatic change control (and CI/CD when more evolved) should be an organizational tool, not an IT tool. "We found a user doing wrong" should be an opportunity to ask "What would this user need to do it right?" rather than simply telling them no. Because oftentimes they literally can't do things "IT-correct" (because of permissions, job title, org location, etc). It seems maladaptive to blame users for not using tools & processes they haven't been allowed to have.

tomnipotent 5y ago

> I've seen "citizen developers" turn away from Power BI/Power Apps precisely because their M365/Azure admins are too micro-managing I've been on both sides of the IT gatekeeping story, and enjoy the irony that we've gone full circle from the mass exodus of business users to SaaS to circumvent gatekeeping only for the success of those tools to introduce centralized management to appeal to more IT organizations.

ethbr0 5y ago
Deleted a comment above where I posted exactly what WorldMaker said. Agree 100%! IMHO, the key is change control. Programmatic change control (and CI/CD when more evolved) should be an organizational tool, not an IT tool. "We found a user doing wrong" should be an opportunity to ask "What would this user need to do it right?" rather than simply telling them no. Because oftentimes they literally can't do things "IT-correct" (because of permissions, job title, org location, etc). It seems maladaptive to blame users for not using tools & processes they haven't been allowed to have.