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POWER PLATFORM AT SCALE

Roles and Accountability — Who Decides What

Ownership ambiguity is a model problem, not a technology problem. Six roles with explicit accountability across four delivery tiers ensure the right person is responsible — and knows it.

“When ownership is documented at creation and maintained continuously, the investigation does not need to begin with the question ‘who built this?’”

Ownership ambiguity is not a technology problem. It is a model problem — the predictable consequence of deploying a powerful delivery capability without defining who is accountable for what it produces.


The Six Roles

BOLT defines six roles with explicit accountability across all four tiers.

The Citizen Developer builds and owns Tier 1 and 2 solutions. The Business Team owns the process the solution supports and accepts responsibility for its outcomes. The Platform Team (Centre of Enablement) sets standards, maintains the environment estate, and supports delivery at every tier. The IT Helpdesk handles operational support for deployed solutions. The Line of Business Lead sponsors higher-tier solutions and owns the business case. The CoE Lead maintains platform governance standards and escalates decisions to the Platform Board.


What Power Platform Provides

Environment-level owner fields in Power Platform Admin Center. Solution metadata for maker identification. The Centre of Enablement Starter Kit’s ownership tracking across the entire estate. Managed Environments with defined admin and maker role separation that makes accountability architectural rather than advisory.


The Enterprise Gap

The gap is not in the platform’s ability to record ownership. The gap is in the practice of documenting it at creation and maintaining it through change. Ownership assigned at build time but never reviewed at role transitions is ownership in name only.


One Action

Require a named business owner and a named technical owner for every solution above Tier 1 — documented at the point of solution registration, not retrospectively. Review both at every annual licence renewal and at every tier transition.


Part 17 of 36 | #PowerPlatformAtScale

The full roles model, including the responsibility assignment matrix and escalation path, are in the book.