“The operating model gap is not a mystery. It opens for predictable reasons, follows predictable patterns, and can be closed with a deliberate set of practices.”
There is a pattern that appears consistently across enterprise platform programmes. It is predictable enough that recognising it early is one of the most valuable things a platform team can do.
The Pattern
Year 1 looks like success. Enthusiastic makers discover the platform, build impressive things quickly, and demonstrate real wins. Leadership is engaged. Adoption is growing.
Year 2 looks like momentum. Hackathons run. Solution counts climb. The adoption dashboard looks encouraging in a steering committee presentation.
Year 3 is where the operating model gap becomes visible. Not because the platform failed — but because the governance infrastructure was never built to support the scale that Years 1 and 2 created.
A business-critical process needs an owner and none is documented. A security review surfaces data flows that were never classified. Licences have accumulated beyond projections.
The platform is healthy. The operating model still needs to be built to match it.
What Power Platform Provides
The tools to prevent the Year 3 pattern from emerging are available from Year 1.
Managed Environments surface ownership gaps automatically. The Centre of Enablement Starter Kit runs compliance monitoring continuously. Flow monitoring and Application Insights detect issues proactively. Data Loss Prevention policies enforce data governance at the connector level.
The gap opens when governance infrastructure is not built at the same pace as adoption.
The Enterprise Gap
Both platform and organisation share responsibility for closing it. The six failure patterns that appear when the gap goes unaddressed — covered in next week’s article — name what the gap looks like when it goes unaddressed.
The question is not whether this pattern appears. It is whether the governance model is built before the gap widens.
One Action
Identify which year the current platform programme is in. Then ask: does the governance infrastructure match the current scale of adoption? The answer points directly to where investment is needed.
Part 4 of 36 | #PowerPlatformAtScale
The Year 1/2/3 pattern and the FRACTS model are covered in detail in the book.