Enterprise-wide solutions on the Power Platform at Network Rail with James Connelly

Mark Smith: 0:01
Welcome to the Power Platform Show. Thanks for joining me today. I hope today's guest inspires and educates you on the possibilities of the Microsoft Power Platform. Now let's get on with the show. In this episode we're going to be talking about mega-apps or companies that are building on the power platform at scale. Today's guest is from the United Kingdom. He works at Network Rail as a power platform technical lead. He's responsible for defining strategy, governance, security and delivering solutions on the power platform. He's running the London Marathon in 2024 for Headway, the brain injury charity. You can find links to his bio, socials, etc. In the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, james.

James Connelly: 0:55
Thanks, mark, great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Mark Smith: 0:58
All good. I didn't know whether that marathon, if you'd already run it or whether I saw it was last year that I ran that marathon. When was it?

James Connelly: 1:05
I feel like it ran me, to be honest. Yeah, it was in April this year. It was a really great experience for a charity that's kind of close to me. I'm actually running it next year, maybe super early enough for a different charity and hot off the press. Next year, mr Huntingford Chris Huntingford and myself are doing the London Landmarks Path Marathon, raising money for Headway. So yeah, I think that speaks volumes for him as a person to support me through what he has done for the last few years, through a difficult time.

Mark Smith: 1:41
He's an interesting guy, Chris, in that he really engages well with people right, he really takes everything personally, it's great.

James Connelly: 1:51
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think we all need cheerleaders in our life. Obviously, don't picture Hunningsford in a cheerleader's outfit. That would just be weird. Might be too late for that. But yeah, I think he's done a lot for people personally and in their careers as well. So, yeah, I should shout out to him.

Mark Smith: 2:10
Yeah, so good, so good. Before we you know, talk about what you're doing in the Power Platform space. Tell me a bit about Food, family, fun. What do you do when you're not working? What do you like to eat? Who do you like to hang out with?

James Connelly: 2:24
Let's talk about food first. That's number one Nice, I love to eat chicken wings. I spoke on Sprint Zero podcast about my love for a chicken restaurant near where I live called Chicken George Unbelievable wings, burgers, anything. The owner is like the Willy Wonka of chicken. I have meetings there after work, you know, meet my friends there, have a great time. So, yeah, love chicken wings. And to counter that in terms of fun, I guess, running and fitness.

James Connelly: 2:52
After quite a, you know, catastrophic head injury I guess in 2021, after, you know, I fall and I had a brain hemorrhage or brain bleed, I guess I once I kind of knew what day of the week it was and what my prognosis might be I wanted to put health and fitness at the forefront of my day to try and give my body the best chance of recovery and to get fitter. I went through that stage, like most people, I guess, go through after an injury or an illness where obviously I felt down. I didn't know what my future would. I felt down, I didn't know what my future would be like. I didn't know if I'd be able to work properly again. So I turned to the booth um, piled on the weight but yeah, after maybe six months, I, uh, you know, I kind of saw the light at the end of the tunnel and you know, I tried to put fitness at the forefront of my day. And now, um, like even today, I ran a 10k this morning before work just no matter what chaos goes on at work.

James Connelly: 3:47
You know, I know I've done something for myself. So, yeah, I think that's in terms of fun. Um, I also like going to ibiza with my friends having a good balance I think you know fitness, but also you know going to ibiza or festivals, or you know going to london and having good times with my friends. So, yeah, I like to get a good balance where you know, going to London and having good times with my friends.

James Connelly: 4:07
So, yeah, I like to get a good balance where, you know, I try to remain active and fit, but then also like to think I know how to let loose Nice. So, yeah, I think that would be my fun. Just a general nerd, I guess, as well. I think the powerlifting community generally are a really great bunch. They've all got their niches and their special interests and stuff. So, yeah, yeah, lots of lots of different things to find out. Big shout out to my mini dash down to Ted. I got him after my head injury and I, you know I wanted to get a, you know, a different responsibility um other than work. Um, when it happened in 21, we were still kind of in a pandemic situation. So I, yeah, well, I think I got him in 2022 actually, yeah, so not long after the pandemic, I'd just come back from Texas. In fact, I bought him when I was out in Texas, or put it down wow took myself down or over to Texas to do some rehabilitation after my injury.

James Connelly: 5:04
So I lived out there for six weeks and my work at Network Rail fortunately supported me really well through that time. So shout out to Network Rail as an employer for all my employees One set, I guess. Yeah, thanks for their support and to my boss, steve Bell, for everything he did through that Nice, a tough time, I guess.

Mark Smith: 5:22
Yeah, so how did the brain injury happen?

James Connelly: 5:25
through that tough time? I guess yeah. So how did the brain injury happen? Well, it was in 2021. We could kind of socialize with people. I was just walking with a family member, it had been snowing, so I slipped on snow and ice over a local golf course. The only thing that broke my fall fell back, was my head. I don't really know what I landed on. I didn't really think too much about it.

Mark Smith: 5:48
At the time it was definitely obviously hard from the ice.

James Connelly: 5:50
Um, and yeah I, I hit the back of my head where my visual processing is, so my sit below wow near my cerebellum um and, very fortunate to to miss my brainstem um.

James Connelly: 6:02
It's a very bizarre situation, to be honest. I mean you could probably talk about it for a full hour or whatever. But yeah, it was a tough time. I kind of got misdiagnosed multiple times. It was just a concussion and then weeks after it happened I had a spinal or neurospinal injury called hypotonia. So I lost about 60-h percent of my spinal muscles and down my back and neck couldn't walk properly for over a year, I guess couldn't stand upright.

James Connelly: 6:33
So yeah, that's why I wanted to do london marathon, because I was told that yeah that's to some degree I might not be able to walk properly again, I guess by phys. So yeah, it was a bit of a We'll say our way to the people who were a little bit negative in that situation. When I picked up my marathon medal, I guess there's a nice photo of me at the finish line where it says congratulations, I'm finishing the London Marathon I've put a special message to myself because I had a headway t-shirt on. It was saying was saying for me, my injury in january 2021 and also for the 350 000 people that are, um, you know, admitted to hospital every year in uk that suffer brain injuries.

James Connelly: 7:16
so yeah, it was an emotional day yeah, a bit but yeah, I'm grateful for the mindset it's given me and the view that I have on life. Now I think I'm obviously not grateful for the trauma, but I'm kind of not the same person, but I don't always think that's a bad thing. It's helped me really know who can be there for me in life and who I should be there for as well. And yeah, I know it's in the past, but I look forward now already.

Mark Smith: 7:43
Yeah, wow, just as you say life-changing, right, and so you know I can expect if you came off a motorcycle, I can expect if you're in a car accident, like you know, that's where you would associate, but to fall backwards and just like I say a freak accident, right, so, so crazy. So you ran the marathon. So is that the first time you've run a marathon? At that point.

James Connelly: 8:12
Yeah, I hated the idea of running before we entered. I've played a lot of sport but just running just bored me, to be honest. But I think I started around August last year running. So yeah, I'd been running for, yeah, what seven-ish months, I guess, before the marathon. It wasn't particularly quick, but I mean, you know it was a story and of course it was close to me so I thought I'd put every effort into it. You learn a lot about yourself as a person, I think running, looking after your body, your mind, sticking to a plan regime, routine, which you can kind of, you know, cross-transfer skills, I guess, into the workplace.

Mark Smith: 8:48
Amazing, amazing. So tell us a bit about where you work, what you do.

James Connelly: 8:53
It could be a bit of a long intro. So I guess my job is first of all vouch for this. I'm a solution architect, an enterprise architect. I own a local strategy at Network Rail. I kind of co-manage a dev team, a pro-dev team, on and offshore, offshore in Egypt and India. I'm a technical lead, technical admin Basically Jack of all trades, probably master of none.

James Connelly: 9:17
The organization I work for we own and manage the infrastructure, the railway infrastructure in England, wales and Scotland. So we don't operate like the actual train services itself. They're train operating companies but we maintain the infrastructure, make sure it's as reliable as possible and, most importantly, as safe as possible. So we've got loads of different job roles. Obviously I work in central IT, but we have signalers, track engineers, project managers, people in legal, hr, finance you name it really wide job roles available network rails. So we've got 42,000-ish permanent employees, contractors.

James Connelly: 10:01
So, yeah, we're kind of like an arm's length public body part of, or like arm's length from, the Department for Transport in the UK. We just had a new government formed in the UK so we will be forming Great British Rail Railways, GBR. So we'll probably end up merging with the train operating companies and other bodies to form like a super organization, always GBR. So we'll probably end up merging with the train operating companies and other bodies to form like a super organization, I guess, to kind of, I guess, be fully public to some degree, which will make us huge, I guess over a hundred thousand people. To be fair to say, I think we've got over 20,000 miles of track. We operate and and maintain things like you know, like bridges and level crossings, the track itself, make sure it's safe in terms of leaffall In the autumn. We manage plenty of the largest stations across England, scotland and Wales. So yeah, quite a lot of things going on in that world.

Mark Smith: 11:02
That's amazing. So what came to mind there because I didn't know you covered Scotland as well was, of course, the Harry Potter Bridge, which I've gone and stood above and watched the steam engine come through that way. Tell me how long has the company been in business?

James Connelly: 11:19
Well, we've had very different names. We've had Railtrack and all sorts really. So certainly before my time in terms of how long of a race is there. So yeah, I mean we've had very different. We've been public through Railtrack, obviously, we're currently now at Rail. Yep. We've got GBR coming. So yeah, I can't remember how long we've been going for, certainly before my time.

Mark Smith: 11:44
But did I get this right, as in you or the iterations of your company, beforehand? It's around 200 years, isn't it? Didn't you guys invent the railway for the world?

James Connelly: 11:55
Yes, Well, I think we can claim that one. Yeah, I mean, we have great heritage in the railway, obviously from the steam engine times, and I think our consulting arm at Network Rail usually get a commission to go out to the USA to buy us on railway implementation. So yeah, we really have a great reputation worldwide for rail.

Mark Smith: 12:19
Amazing, amazing, so not a young company. So how did you, as an organization, get started with the power platform?

James Connelly: 12:27
um, yeah, sure, so uh, it's around 2019, I think. We first started kind of traveling even before I kind of came, came into role. My, I guess my background, um, was I studied the computer science at uni, I went into the full-stack development role, ended up in there where I was a junior PM, so I wanted to understand the business side of things. And then 2020, I kind of nagged my now boss to give me an opportunity in the digital factory, which traditionally was a full-stack team developing mobile apps for the railway. So yeah, I guess around late 2019, early 2020 was when we really started to take it seriously and the pandemic meant that everyone had to change the way that it was working. So they needed to. A lot of our office-based staff were obviously working remotely, people were looking at new ways of developing collaboration tools and automating processes, assigning tasks to people, et cetera. So yeah, over the pandemic it kind of spiraled.

Mark Smith: 13:28
And give us a feel currently around how many apps, automations, portals, any of the bits that make up the Power Platform, how big is the implementation roundabout at Network Rail?

James Connelly: 13:43
I think it's about 28,000 Power Apps in flows. Yeah, 8,500 Power Apps in about 20,000 flows. 2,500 makers. I'm not a fan of citizen developers as in not the concept, the name. I don't think a job title should define who someone is. There might be a citizen dev or quote-unquote citizen dev there's actually a better developer than one of our pro devs but just because they don't have a job title, not all that. Yeah, 2,500 makers. 28,000 apps and flows 16,000 to 18,000 monthly active PowerApp users.

James Connelly: 14:19
Wow In terms of consumers of PowerApp and growing. I see between 200 to 500 new apps a month and about 700 new flows a month. Wow, granted, a cleanup is needed, much like my bedroom and car, but it's great, right Like the fact that people are you know, even if they're creating James Test app or flow it might not ever get used, but the fact that people from different industries and they're around, not just in IT are even wanting to develop things is fantastic.

James Connelly: 14:52
you know, most of our makers are outside of IT, which makes it even better because I think, after all, you know, makers know their business problems much better than any partner will know, as we've probably discussed on LinkedIn on some posts that you've done and they know their business problems better than what we do in IT. So why not empower them to develop, especially the extra smalls, the smalls and the medium-sized solutions, and for the larger and extra large solutions, let's get using teams involved to blend either partner-led deliveries in collaboration with makers or even us as a pro-dev team, or, even better, us as a pro-dev team, I think, keeping it in-house where we can.

Mark Smith: 15:36
If I looked at a high level at the apps running in your org, what would the top three be at the top of that list? What's the kind of use cases generally?

James Connelly: 15:44
Put me on the spot now. No, number one. See, this is a contentious topic, right, because we're relying on a stable COE toolkit install, which we don't have at the moment. We've got so many assets. The traditional cloud flow approach with COE toolkit doesn't really work very well for large tenants. Flow approach with COE toolkit doesn't really work very well for large tenants. Yes, so the credentials one. We're looking at the data export one. But I know for a fact that safety events is number one. See around 7,000 unique users a month for that one. So that's all about somebody reporting something. That's basically a close call, so something could turn into an event. Yep, so someone is logging that We've actually got 40,000 for app passes assigned for that production environment. Wow, wow indeed, because the licensing model is kind of broken, but that's one for another day.

Mark Smith: 16:32
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Connelly: 16:35
But yeah, definitely that would be number one at the moment. I would say our shared services forms is probably up there as well in terms of digitizing our HR forms. Traditionally they would be filled in manually by someone, but we moved them into Power Apps and Power Platforms. We also made that process to repurpose, not replace headcount and just streamline the whole process where we can get know, get some data validation in, make sure that the data screen capture is correct. So, yeah, shared services would be up there. And then we see a lot of track engineering forms and inspection forms. So you know, we could be here for the next probably 20, 30 years and still not digitize every form and process in network rail wow so lots, so lots of inspection stuff, people on track.

James Connelly: 17:24
Maybe they've got some projects going on. They need to do a line block, close a line, for example. A lot of that is going down the Power Platform route where obviously you can capture data rather than just sit on a piece of paper which you can't really do much with. Obviously you can obviously capture quality data rather than Most of our frontline workers. Obviously they might be working November, december time especially it's always freezing, cold in the UK. Imagine them with a piece of paper and a pen, freezing, it's raining, it's windy, horrendous. Suddenly we can digitize that form and give them a better experience and you know they can complete that form, you know with a tablet et cetera, and just that data can then obviously be centralized, reported on, decisions can be made.

Mark Smith: 18:16
But yeah, probably didn't answer your question no, it's good Straight off, but that's the sort of flavor of things that we develop. I have a lot of people say and I've seen a lot in the enterprise space which your implementation would be considered you know around the world that, particularly from enterprise architects, that they have been sold a hard story around CitizenDev and anybody can create apps and the concern it's created for them is well, if anybody can do it, it can't be enterprise because not everybody has formal training on app development, security, application lifecycle management, et cetera. But how would you answer? Is the Power Platform an enterprise tool for organizations?

James Connelly: 19:34
Yes, but SharePoint is not a relational database to use at scale and my personal opinions or views of my own and not those of my organization are that, firstly, associating a power platform with low-code is a term that discredits, in my opinion, the technology and the people that develop it.

James Connelly: 19:53
Because it's great, you can develop apps at scale and quickly develop on a scale, but also you can develop really complex things, but also quickly.

James Connelly: 20:03
And I think when non-techie people, maybe stakeholders, see the term low-code, they just think, oh, dragon Drop, it does it for you. Obviously, with CodePilot it can lead you there, but it's not there yet. So I guess, in answer to your question, I think it can be an enterprise-grade platform if it's governed correctly, if you empower your makers properly, and that means with a hub site a SharePoint hub site that we've just released, directing people to self-serve, put communities in place to help each other to use the support almost like an internal stack overflow that we have with the Teams site and it has to be security first, right. If you don't, security and governance first, you have to strike a balance where you're not blocking people, but equally you can't be free reign. You can balance where you're not blocking people, but equally you can't be free reign, you can't have open DLPs and all that kind of thing, so you have to strike a balance. It can be enterprise grade if it's rolled out properly and resourced properly at platform level.

James Connelly: 21:12
Unfortunately, at the moment at our organization, it's probably fair to say that the platform isn't resourced properly, but it is well governed and I say it's not resourced properly because I'm single-handedly running the whole platform, one of the top 20 uk users of our platform and one of the top 250 globally wow, that's not me blowing my own trumpet, that is, whoever is in that role is a single point of success.

James Connelly: 21:36
I like to say so yeah, is it governed properly? You empower people properly, you set up communities and you resource the platform properly and you've got a really tight dlp from the outset, which is what we didn't have when we inherited it. I think you're you're going to be on to a winner because I think if you constantly rely on partners to deliver solutions, that knowledge that they are taking away in terms of what they've built, you're forever reliant on that partner, whereas if you can empower your makers and treat it as a business transformation, not IT transformation kind of rollout, then you're onto a winner Because, like I said before, your makers know their business problems better than anyone else. You just have to make sure that they have the kind of resources available to develop properly, safely and in a future-proof manner.

James Connelly: 22:31
Then I think it could be an enterprise-grade. Unfortunately, the licensing model lets the platform down. And I mentioned security as well. Microsoft has put secure by default into their kind of vision. Unfortunately, there needs a big asterisk there because it's not secure by default if you're not full premium licensed and, unfortunately, until an organization like us proves the value of premium at scale. Unless an organization has made a strategic decision to go down a power platform route and invest millions of pounds a year in licensing, then you have to prove the value of the product. That the current model, in my opinion, doesn't enable an organization of our size to do that. And the things like managed environments are a bit of a bugbear for me as well. That's not secure by default. That's a secure by default asterisk. If you're a full-fledged organization, the default environment is the problem.

Mark Smith: 23:26
Interesting. There's so much that I want to unpack there, but I know we're going to have time constraints. But maybe we'll have an offline discussion. I'd be interested in you taking a look at the blog post that I publish tomorrow. Yeah, sure, offline discussion.

Mark Smith: 23:39
Um, I'd be interested in you taking a look at the blog post that I published tomorrow yeah sure, um around, um you know, center for enablement at scale and see how much you have done and what I've covered there. It's not short, it's over 2000 word posts, so it's a bit of a longy um, but I put a bit of thought into it. Um, that aside, tell me, you talked about having offshore development teams. Are they owned by you directly, and what I mean by that? Are they an extension of your team, rather than you know you're hiring one of the big four consulting crowds and they're providing those resources to you, or are they somebody that's kind of paid directly by Network Rail? I know they might not necessarily have the Network Rail brand, because that's how offshore development centers run, but are they definitely an extension of your team?

James Connelly: 24:27
They're an extension of our team, but we pay an organization to provide that team if that makes sense. But they fit in with our sprint team. Yeah, so they're not Network Rail employees. No, it's just a harsh truth of the fact that developers offshore provide our organization a lot better value. That being said, we have a fantastic apprenticeship scheme at narrow rail. Yeah, ben Atherton, who is our, I guess, head of power platform engineering 24 or 25, I might not get it right, but he joins with me in 2020 into the digital factory. We had not really much idea about what power packing would give the digital factory. Low code was relatively unknown, but then has progressed from being an apprentice and it's fair to say that you didn't really know what direction his career was going to go down into a low-code developer as a permanent role and now basically head of power plant engineering in the best part of four and a half years. Our apprenticeship scheme is fantastic. All of our permanent low-code developers, apart from one, is a former apprentice.

Mark Smith: 25:32
Wow, I definitely want to unpack that as a separate thing as well, but my final question, based on our timing for today, is you talked about 2,000 makers in your pool, and how do you facilitate engagement with 2,000 people? How do you facilitate communicate even and I know you can just blast out an email but how do they feel like they are part of something inside Network Rail that is wrapped around this technology, and I suppose, in a way, I'm asking for how you create that internal community that has been effective and that I assume people want to get involved and want to advance themselves, even though it might not be in alignment with how they're paid or compensated or in their day job type role. It might be more of what Google would refer to as a 20% project, something they did on the side, outside their core project. How do you create that cohesion?

James Connelly: 26:43
Yeah. So the first thing we pretty much did was set up a team site. I'm not going to say the name of it because Hasbro might sue me for saying it, but it's not a particularly unique name in terms of the community. But we set up a team site that we put most people in who we saw from the COE toolkit that they were building, to run monthly calls with them. We have show and tells, for example. So rather than it just be a forced approach with oh, we're blocking the HTTP connector and you need to license this stuff properly and stop stuffing it in SharePoint and stuff, there's a bit of a balance, because there's a bit of a carrot and a stick kind of situation, I guess. So rather than me as a you know, quote-unquote professional developer, whatever my background is, rather than me sitting there and saying how to do a piece of functionality like offline functionality with, you know, sharepoint and all that kind of stuff, I don't think people really receive that very well. To be honest. I think people relate to you, relate to other people that have been in similar situations.

James Connelly: 27:42
So we do the show and tell. So maybe an engineer or someone who was in signaling will come on. They will present their solution. I won't say app, but I like thinking about solutions. Now, hopefully, and I think, if we can strut our balance between showcasing governance and what you need to follow but also empowering them to make, maybe someone comes in and says I've never even touched Excel before and now I've developed this application or this solution, then people are inspired by people who are like them.

James Connelly: 28:17
So, yeah, I mean we use that multiple to articulate changes in the platform, changes in the network, but also to showcase the great things that the community is doing we now have. It was a really quick thing, so don't judge me on it being a PowerPoint slide, but basically one slider, I guess, of a solution. So a couple of pictures of the apps and maybe BI stuff on there and then also down the left about who developed it and what the business problem was, what the return of investment was, what elements of power back can be used so people can gain inspiration. That way We've got some great things coming with a solution catalog to surface what's been built, the value, but also in linking it back to the enterprise staff, the support details and data sensitivity, et cetera. So that will be a registration. That data will then surface into a catalog which will promote reuse before duplication.

James Connelly: 29:14
It gets people talking to each other as well. The community will be like oh, I really like your project management tool that you've built. Can we talk, Can I reuse it, Can I enhance it? That kind of thing. We've got the SharePoint Hub site, which is like a central repository for people to self-serve. It also takes tickets away from me as well where people can resolve things.

James Connelly: 29:32
We've got a developer pathway coming as well, probably as well probably end of the year or next year where, in terms of the, the fear that people might think about a platform where anyone can come in and develop a business critical solution. That is true, but then also it's on you and I see if you own the platform to somewhat provide them a pathway to get to that kind of um situation where they can develop for the organization. So we've got, you've got badges. I'd like to promote an internal MVP style scheme where, again, it's clever because people are incentivized, I guess, by engaging with the community, and then when they get a contribution maybe it's a blog article on a hub site about how they've done a piece of functionality, or maybe they've even helped someone or mentored someone they get a contribution. I love it. And then, if you know, if they get something that, in terms of get enough contributions, they can get some badges. Everyone loves a badge and a signature workshop with our pro dev team.

James Connelly: 30:29
So big things coming. I'm excited, but, um, yeah, I guess that's a really long-winded answer to your question it's good, james, thank you so much for coming on the show. You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Mark Smith: 30:42
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If there's a guest you'd like to see on the show, please message me on LinkedIn. If you want to be a supporter of the show, please check out buymeacoffeecom. Forward slash NZ365guy. Stay safe out there and shoot for the stars.