You hired the data team. Now what?
Two analysts. One data engineer. One job posting open for nine months. The backlog grows faster than the team can ship.
Two engineers, one open senior role for nine months, a backlog that grows faster than the team can ship. Fix it with a Power Platform Centre of Excellence + senior on-demand expertise. 40 citizen developers in six months, 60% backlog drained.
If half of these sound familiar, this is your fight.
No formal assessment needed, just an honest look at the daily friction.
You've had a senior data engineer role open for over six months.
Business teams wait weeks for a single dashboard change.
New tools land but adoption stalls because nobody can train users.
Your data team spends most days fixing pipelines, not delivering value.
Citizen developers want to help but there's no safe sandbox.
You can't risk hiring junior. Every new project ships under deadline.
Why it happens
Talent scarcity
Senior Fabric, Azure, Power Platform engineers are scarce in Belgium and Estonia. Salaries keep climbing.
No platform leverage
Without standardised templates and a CoE, every project rebuilds basics from scratch.
No citizen-developer rails
The 80/20 of low-risk work could go to citizen devs, but only with environments, DLP and ALM in place.
What it costs you
Backlog drift
Strategic projects slip while the team keeps the lights on. The list of "next quarter" things grows without end.
Knowledge concentration
Two people know the platform. When one leaves, half the roadmap stalls for a quarter.
Adoption ceiling
Even great dashboards land flat if nobody can train, evangelise or onboard users.
The shortest path from problem to results.
Microsoft-first stack. Belgian and Estonian engineering. Senior team kickoff through delivery to support.
Senior team kickoff through delivery to support
Bring in seasoned Fabric, Azure and Power Platform engineers, day one. No junior bait-and-switch.
See solutionCentre of Excellence for citizen devs
Power Platform CoE with environments, DLP, naming, ALM, so makers can ship without breaking governance.
See solutionKnowledge transfer & enablement
Pair-programming, documented patterns, monthly office hours, so your team gets stronger, not dependent.
See solutionWhen two engineers became a 40-person citizen-dev movement.
Power Platform CoE · 40 makers in six months
A Walloon public-sector organisation with two overworked data engineers and a 12-month backlog. We built a Power Platform CoE, trained 40 citizen developers, certified 18 apps and 22 flows. Backlog drained 60% in six months. Engineers freed for strategic work.
The skills gap is solvable. Let's scope your CoE.
Free 60-minute CoE readiness call: we'll map your makers, your guardrails and your first wins.
Common questions, direct answers.
Why a Power Platform CoE specifically?
Most data backlog is low-risk work (small apps, automations, reports) that citizen developers can ship, if you have environments, DLP, ALM and naming standards. The CoE is the rails, not the bottleneck.
Don't citizen developers create more chaos?
Without a CoE, yes. With one (environments, DLP policies, certified template gallery, monthly office hours), 80% of citizen-built solutions follow the same patterns the IT team would have used.
How long does CoE setup take?
Six weeks for foundation (environments, DLP, ALM pipelines, governance). Six months to scale to 30-50 active makers. The first 30 days produce more value than buying another senior engineer.
What if our culture is "IT does it for us"?
That's the harder problem, and the bigger upside. The cultural unlock typically takes a quarter of training + two flagship internal champions. After that, it self-perpetuates.
Will Sparkle just send a junior to "scale" us?
No. Senior team, kickoff through delivery to support. We don't use juniors as profit-centre leverage, which is why our day rate is higher and our retention is too.