The retirement of Microsoft Project Online has prompted many organisations to reassess how they manage projects, programmes and portfolios. For many already invested in Microsoft 365, Power Apps naturally becomes part of that conversation.
On paper, it makes perfect sense. You're already using Microsoft's ecosystem, your users are familiar with the tools, and the promise of building something tailored to your exact requirements is incredibly appealing.
But building your own project and portfolio management solution is a very different proposition from buying one.
The real question isn't whether Power Apps is capable as it absolutely is. The question is whether building and maintaining an interconnected ecosystem is the right long-term investment for your organisation.
Power Apps is an incredibly powerful suit of platforms. Together they allow organisations to create applications that integrate seamlessly with Microsoft 365, connecting to existing data sources and automating business processes.
For organisations already embedded within Microsoft's ecosystem, there are obvious advantages.
Users are already familiar with SharePoint, Teams, Excel and the wider Microsoft environment and security is managed within an ecosystem they already trust, with applications that can be designed around existing business processes rather than asking people to completely change the way they work.
Its biggest strength is its flexibility. Rather than adapting your organisation to fit a piece of software, Power Apps allows software to be designed around your organisation and for some businesses, that's exactly what's needed.
However, the same flexibility that makes Power Apps so attractive is also where many organisations begin to underestimate the long-term commitment, as every bespoke decision creates another dependency.
Data might sit in Dataverse, SharePoint Lists, Microsoft SQL Server or other sources. Workflows become interconnected and integrations multiply. New requirements are added as the organisation evolves.
Initially, each individual decision makes perfect sense. Collectively, however, they can create an increasingly complex ecosystem that only a handful of people truly understand.
That isn't a criticism of Power Apps. It's simply the reality of building bespoke software. The more tailored a solution becomes, the more responsibility an organisation takes for maintaining that solution over time.
When organisations compare the cost of building against buying, they often focus on the initial implementation, which is understandable as implementation is visible.
What is less visible is everything that comes afterwards. Software is never really finished because business processes constantly evolve when reporting requirements change or teams restructure. Tighter governance develops that ensures consistency leads to growth and then new regulations emerge and every one of those changes creates new requirements for your platform.
In a bespoke environment, someone needs to understand how every part of the solution fits together before those changes can be made safely and that often requires specialist knowledge and specialist knowledge comes at a cost.
Whether that expertise sits internally or with an external development partner, organisations become reliant on people who understand the architecture they've created and if key individuals move on, knowledge leaves with them.
If requirements change significantly, modifications can become more complex than originally anticipated.
Over time, those ongoing costs can outweigh the benefits that originally justified building the solution.
Often, this is a consideration that organisations overlook: When you build your own PPM platform, you're no longer simply implementing software. You're becoming responsible for a software product.
That means owning:
For organisations whose core business isn't software development, that's a significant commitment and also one that rarely appears on the original business case.
One of the biggest advantages of bespoke software is that it can evolve alongside your organisation and ironically, that's also where some of the biggest challenges emerge.
Changing one component can have unexpected consequences elsewhere. Updating data structures may affect reports and introducing a new workflow may require multiple integrations to be reviewed. Even relatively straightforward requests can become technical exercises because every part of the platform is interconnected.
The result isn't that change becomes impossible. It simply becomes more expensive, more time consuming and more dependent on specialist expertise than many organisations expect.
Another factor that's often overlooked is implementation time. Building something tailored to your organisation takes... well... time. Requirements need to be gathered, applications designed, Integrations developed, testing completed, users trained etc.
Then comes go-live and after that, refinement.
In many cases, organisations are looking at many months before they've reached a mature solution.
Dedicated PPM platforms, on the other hand, have already gone through years of development, refinement and customer feedback before implementation even begins.
That doesn't make one approach better than the other. But it does change how quickly organisations can begin realising value.
Some organisations look to avoid the complexity of building from scratch by purchasing packaged solutions built on Power Apps. That can be an excellent middle ground as many of these products accelerate implementation and reduce the amount of bespoke development required.
However, they also introduce an interesting compromise because one of Power Apps' biggest strengths is unlimited flexibility. But packaged solutions naturally standardise that flexibility into predefined modules and capabilities.
For many organisations, that's perfectly acceptable. But if significant customisation is still required, costs can begin increasing again as changes move beyond the standard offering.
At that point, organisations can find themselves somewhere between bespoke development and commercial software, without fully benefiting from the strengths of either approach.
There isn't a universal answer.
Power Apps is an exceptionally capable platform, and for organisations with the right technical expertise, governance structures and long-term investment, it can deliver highly tailored solutions that closely reflect the way they work.
But capability shouldn't be the only factor in the decision. Organisations should also consider ownership.
Sometimes the right answer is to build. Other times, the smarter investment is adopting a purpose-built platform that has already solved many of the challenges you're about to begin tackling.
Ultimately, the decision isn't about choosing between Microsoft and specialist software. It's about deciding whether your organisation wants to build software... or simply benefit from it.