From Words to Pictures
Deep within the Weeds: Dates in Dataverse

A powerful team for Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Projects

Delivering all of the awesome of a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Project - It is nice to have a full team and ChatGPT did a pretty good job of summarizing some of the roles, definitions and responsibilities. I also popped in and added even more experienced love. 

 

Power Platform Team Picture

🔹 1. Product Owner

  • Definition: Represents the business and end-users, responsible for defining the product vision and prioritizing features.

  • A role held by the customer, aka the SME experts in the industry.
  • Responsibilities:

  • Defines business requirements and goals.
  • Brokers relationships to other business teams whose solutions integrate or need alignment with the project
  • Maintains and prioritizes the product backlog (on a regular cadence).
  • Clarifies business questions or aligns with the people who can clarify the business questions
  • Makes decisions on scope and features in coordination with the budget.
  • Owns the project budget and is a key decision maker in change orders
  • Acts as a bridge between stakeholders and the delivery team.

🔹 2. Project Manager (PM)

  • Definition: Oversees the entire project lifecycle to ensure it is delivered on time, within scope, and on budget.

  • A role held by the consulting firm, aka the SMEs who delivery thousands of projects
  • Responsibilities:

  • Creates and manages project plans, timelines, and budgets.
  • Coordinates team efforts.
  • Manages risks and issues and mitigation options
  • Communicates progress with stakeholders.
  • Develops and presents change orders as necessary

🔹 3. Functional Consultant / Functional Lead

  • Definition: Translates business requirements into system functionality using Dynamics 365 configuration and customization.

  • Responsibilities:

  • Gathers and analyzes requirements.
  • Designs business processes and customizes and configures the application.
  • Conducts workshops and training sessions.
  • Serves as the subject matter expert (SME) on Dynamics 365 Sales features (or specific model driven app features including xRM).
  • Shares and Enforces team customization standards for long term success
  • Communicates Fit/Gap on features in alignment with business requirements
  • Estimates level of effort and provides choices

🔹 4. Solution Architect

  • Definition: Designs the overall technical and functional architecture of the solution.

  • A role held by the consulting firm, aka SMEs on overseeing the delivery of hundreds of projects
  • Responsibilities:

  • Defines system architecture and integration strategy.
  • Document system architecture in business and technical detail
  • Aligns technical design with business goals.
  • Oversees configuration, customizations, and extensions.
  • Guides developers and functional teams.
  • Overall responsible for the functional performance of the system and the alignment to business requests

🔹 5. Technical Architect

  • Definition: Focuses on the technical components like infrastructure, integration, and data migration.

  • Responsibilities:

  • Designs technical architecture and environments.
  • Plans integrations and security models.
  • Coordinates with IT teams and manages system dependencies.
  • Participates in peer review and supports the development lead in code reviews
  • Overall responsible for the technical performance of the system

🔹 6. Developer (Dynamics 365 Developer or Azure Developer)

  • Definition: Implements extensions, plugins, workflows, Power Automates, and integrations using code. An extension is above and beyond what the Microsoft Development team plans to build and is not unexpected from Microsoft. 

  • Responsibilities:

  • Develops custom logic (C#, JavaScript, Power Automate).
  • Builds integrations with other systems via Connectors, APIs or custom.
  • Implements custom UI components using Power Apps or PCF or other UI/UX tools.
  • Performs developer specific testing
  • Supports deployment of extensions and solutions possibly being involved with ALM automation or testing automation.
  • Develops Azure Function Apps or Azure Logic Apps leveraging Azure Service Bus (if also trained in custom development on Azure)
  • Works with middleware tools 
  • Can potentially also have skills in Azure Synapse, Azure Data Factory and Data Migration technologies such as Microsoft SSIS

🔹 7. Data Migration Specialist

  • Definition: Responsible for extracting, transforming, and loading data into Dynamics 365.

  • Responsibilities:

  • Works with legacy data systems.
  • Coordinates with the business to understand transformation requirements
  • Provides options for cleaning data or transforming data, but always in coordination with the business Solution Matter Experts
  • Maps and migrates data.
  • Has a deep understanding of the Dataverse and Data Modeling and Schemas
  • Ensures data integrity and provides checksum validation.
  • Coordinates with the business on SME data testing after migration

🔹 8. QA/Test Lead

  • Definition: Ensures the solution is thoroughly tested and meets quality standards.

  • Responsibilities:

  • Creates and manages test plans and test cases.
  • Manages the Test Team
  • Performs/Coordinates functional and integration testing and works with the business on UAT Testing.
  • Validates acceptance criteria to confirm that it is testable
  • Identifies bugs, issues and new user stories and ensures bug fixes are prioritized and implemented.

🔹 9. Change Management Lead / Adoption Specialist

  • Definition: Drives user adoption and manages the human side of change.

  • Responsibilities:

  • Mitigates change impact
  • Works with the business users on potential pain points
  • Developers SME Champions
  • Develops training materials and user guides.
  • Conducts training sessions and user onboarding.
  • Manages communications and stakeholder engagement.
  • Ensures user feedback is gathered and addressed.

🔹 10. Business Analyst

  • Definition: Bridges the gap between business needs and technical implementation.

  • Responsibilities:

  • Analyzes and documents detailed requirements.
  • Documents workflows and processes and builds out current and future flow charts
  • Supports functional consultants in refining user stories.
  • Supports the business in writing testable acceptance criteria for requirements
  • Assists in functional and user acceptance testing (UAT) testing and validation against testable acceptance criteria.

🔹 11. Integration Specialist

  • Definition: Focuses specifically on connecting Dynamics 365 to external systems.

  • Responsibilities:

  • Designs and develops middleware and API-based integrations.
  • Ensures secure and scalable data flow between systems.
  • Develops and aligns on data volume and related performance needs based on volume
  • Works closely with architects and developers.

🔹 12. Support / DevOps Engineer and Administrator

  • Definition: Provides operational support and manages deployments.

  • Responsibilities:

  • Manages environments and CI/CD pipelines.
  • Monitors usage, performance and logs.
  • Manages ticketing and Power Platform Administration
  • Coordinates the administration of onboarding users per environment
  • Sets up automation for Role Based Entitlement security role alignment
  • Supports go-live and post-go-live phases.

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