Smarter by Design: kill–simplify–scale

📌 It all starts with requirements — and most of them are bad.

We don’t talk enough about it, but requirement engineering is the moment where every Power Platform project either sets itself up for success — or quietly signs up for chaos.

Someone says:

“We just need a small app.”Or:“Can you automate this form? It’s urgent.”

But no one asks the real questions:

• Does this process make sense?

• Is it still relevant?

• Is it worth building at all?

Before jumping into Power Apps or writing a single flow, there’s one filter that can radically improve your requirements, your design decisions, and your user experience:

Does it kill, simplify, or scale something? If not, it’s probably just a shiny new spreadsheet.

Let’s break it down.

🔪 KILL

Some processes don’t need to be digitized. They need to disappear.

Digitizing a useless process doesn’t make it more valuable — it just makes it harder to get rid of later.

✅ Examples of what to kill:

• Manually reminding people of birthdays

• Multi-step approvals for snack expenses

• Surveys nobody reads or follows up on

• Documenting things “just in case”

Ask yourself: “If we stopped doing this tomorrow, would anyone notice?” If the answer is no — you’ve found something to kill.

💡 Don’t automate dysfunction. Erase it.

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🔄 SIMPLIFY

Great Power Platform solutions make smart processes faster, smoother, and more usable.

If your app or flow is harder to explain than the original problem, it’s not simple — it’s bloated.

✅ Ways to simplify:

• Use Canvas Apps to condense multi-step approvals into a single screen

• Let Copilot draft summaries or emails based on form entries

• Use role-based visibility so people only see what’s relevant to them

⚠️ Complexity isn’t clever — clarity is.

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📈 SCALE

You’ve got a working solution — but can it go further?

Scaling means building once, using many times. It means creating value without needing to be in the room every time it runs.

✅ Ways to scale:

• Turn your onboarding app into a department-wide template

• Translate your chatbot into multiple languages

• Add Power BI on top to monitor use, adoption, or ROI

• Expose parts of your app via Power Pages so others can access it

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🚀 Great apps keep helping — even when you’re offline.

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🧠 Explain it in two sentences

Let’s be real. If you can’t explain what your app or flow does in two plain-English sentences, your user can’t either.

Try this:

“This app helps people book internal training in under 2 minutes.”

“This chatbot answers common HR policy questions and routes exceptions to the right person.”

If you need a page to explain your automation, it’s not ready. Or worse — it’s not needed.

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✅ TL;DR — The framework

✂️ KILL	🔄 SIMPLIFY	📈 SCALE
Remove pointless or outdated processes	Streamline complex workflows	Expand the reach of what already works

Before you build anything in Power Platform, ask yourself:

• Is this process even worth saving?

• Can I make it faster, easier, cleaner?

• Could this help more people than just me?

  
  

If the answer to all three is no — shut down your laptop. Go for a walk.

Power Platform is powerful. But building the wrong thing — faster — is still building the wrong thing.