Building a Sustainable Maker Movement

Financial Services Organisation · United Kingdom · Centre of Excellence · Maker Community · 18-Month Capability Transfer · Completed

CONTEXT

A financial services organisation wanted to help colleagues use Microsoft business applications and Power Platform effectively while avoiding the unmanaged growth, duplicated effort and technical debt that can appear when enthusiastic makers are given powerful tools without a clear operating model.

The organisation had the right ingredients for innovation: an appetite for experimentation, engaged people and a Microsoft platform investment. What it needed was a safe, sustainable way to turn that energy into repeatable capability.

The challenge was not simply to launch a Centre of Excellence. The real challenge was to design the platform, process and people foundations, then transfer enough knowledge and confidence into the internal team that they could lead the work themselves.

This made the engagement different from a traditional consulting delivery. The aim was to create a capability that survived beyond external support: governance that created trust, a community that created momentum, and an internal team confident enough to keep evolving the model.

WHAT I DID

·       Led an 18-month engagement to establish the platform, process and people foundations for a Microsoft Power Platform Centre of Excellence and maker community.

·       Worked with a cross-functional founding team that included the platform owner, product owner, service owner, architect, business technology representative and community lead.

·       Designed the initial Centre of Excellence model around three connected foundations: platform guardrails, process governance and people enablement.

·       Helped establish the governance and operating approach needed for safe adoption, including standards, roles, responsibilities, decision points, guidance and repeatable ways of supporting makers.

·       Worked deliberately in a train-the-trainer style. I led from the background, coached the internal team, helped them design and facilitate the approach, and built their confidence so internal colleagues increasingly led the activity themselves.

·       Designed three pilot phases to test and refine the model before a broader launch. Each pilot ran for six weeks and included a cohort of around 30 volunteers who learned how to use Power Platform tools to solve practical business problems.

·       Used the pilot cohorts as a capability engine. Participants received lightweight structured training, practised problem solving with real scenarios, built confidence with the tools and then joined the growing internal Power Rangers community.

·       Refined the materials, community approach and operating model across the three pilot phases so the launch was based on tested practice rather than theory.

·       Helped shape and deliver a two-day launch event with the client team, Microsoft and Avanade. Day one operated like a mini virtual conference, with speakers inspiring the group and connecting the community to the future opportunity.

·       Designed day two as a practical hackathon. Small teams, supported by mentors, identified a problem, mapped the process, identified pain points, designed a solution, built a prototype, created a short presentation and demoed their work back to peers and senior stakeholders.

·       Supported the transition from consultant-led enablement to internally owned community leadership, so the internal team could sustain the Power Rangers movement after the engagement.

OUTCOME

The programme established a sustainable Power Platform Centre of Excellence model and maker community that the organisation could continue to lead internally.

The initial foundation work brought together the platform owner, product owner, service owner, architect, business technology representative and community lead around a shared operating model for platform, process and people governance.

Across the three pilot phases, around 90 volunteers completed a structured six-week capability-building experience and entered the Power Rangers community with practical experience, confidence and a shared language for solving business problems.

The two-day launch event turned the approach from a pilot into a visible internal movement. The first day created inspiration and alignment; the second day gave participants hands-on experience of problem discovery, process mapping, solution design, build, demo and peer presentation.

By the end of the 18-month engagement, the community launch and internal communications had grown the group to around 300 people.

Most importantly, the community continued to grow after the original founders moved into other roles or organisations. That sustained growth is the evidence that the capability had become embedded rather than dependent on a small founding group.

The outcome was not just a community launch. It was a successful capability transfer: the people who would live with the model gained enough ownership, confidence and practical experience to continue it themselves.

WHY IT MATTERS

Many organisations create a Centre of Excellence that only works while the original sponsor, consultant or founding team is still pushing it forward.

The harder test is whether the capability survives changes in people, roles and attention. Can the organisation keep going after the external support steps back? Can the community keep growing when the founders move on?

This engagement showed that sustainable adoption is built through deliberate ownership transfer. Governance creates trust. Community creates momentum. Capability creates sustainability. Ownership creates longevity.

The goal was not to create external dependency. The goal was to help the organisation build a capability that made external dependency less necessary over time.

Build capability that survives its founders. That is the real mark of a mature maker movement.

AT A GLANCE

Client: Financial services organisation

Sector & geography: Financial services · United Kingdom

My role: Engagement lead, CoE designer, capability coach and community enablement lead

Duration: 18-month engagement

Focus: Platform, process and people governance; Centre of Excellence; maker community; train-the-trainer capability transfer

Founding team: Platform owner, product owner, service owner, architect, business technology representative and community lead

Pilot model: Three 6-week cohorts of approximately 30 volunteers each

Community brand: Power Rangers

Scale: Around 300 community members by the end of the engagement

CORE INSIGHT

Adoption becomes sustainable when the organisation learns to lead it for itself.

Build the guardrails. Train the trainers. Launch the movement. Then step back and let the capability prove it can stand on its own.