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Power Platform automation maturity model overview

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Offering low-code, drag-and-drop tools and hundreds of pre-built connectors, Power Automate empowers business users—citizen developers—to automate repetitive, mundane tasks with ease. To help organizations establish and scale successful automation implementations, Microsoft created a set of automation adoption best practices. Microsoft also developed the automation maturity model, inspired by holistic enterprise automation techniques and the capability maturity model. The automation maturity model can help your organization and its partners think through ways to improve your automation capabilities and align them to business outcomes.

This article explains the automation maturity levels. More information about the capabilities at each level is available in Power Platform automation maturity model details.

Level 100 – Initial

In this phase: Failing forward, experimentation, feasibility analysis, cautious optimism

The organization begins its journey with Power Automate in the Initial phase. During this phase, the organization evaluates its alignment and integration with its architecture and automation vision. Representatives from technology and business verticals discuss the overarching technology and business goals, encompassing the networking, information security, legal, and privacy requirements that are specific to the organization. Technology upskilling endeavors are launched to support Power Automate adoption across the organization. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are established to measure the benefits of automation and its subsequent influence on operational metrics. Recording progress is still manual in this phase.

Level 200 – Repeatable

In this phase: Organization "on-board," digital stewardship, bias to action

In the Repeatable phase, the organization codifies lessons learned from the Initial phase. An automation Center of Excellence (CoE) is established to evangelize adoption, serve as a liaison between technology and business stakeholders, and define best practices. The organization understands the value proposition that automation offers, promotes Power Automate training across the board, and drives change management initiatives. Based on their experiences during the Initial phase, teams highlight potential automation opportunities.

Level 300 – Defined

In this phase: Iterative standardization, feedback collection, gap fulfillment, business and technology resilience

In the Defined phase, the organization standardizes and refines processes that were established in the Repeatable phase. Organizations may redefine goals based on lessons learned and progress made in earlier phases. The groundwork established earlier is evolved with a bias towards scale, security, and resilience. The CoE drives initiatives to automate governance and platform-related concerns to promote scale. Platform governance-related initiatives, encompassing environment provisioning, Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy requests, licensing, and machine management are implemented in this phase.

The organization's maturity to address network security concerns should be gauged periodically. Potential policy violations, exploits, and vulnerabilities should be addressed promptly. As the practice matures and Power Automate emerges as an integral part of the organization's technology landscape, the need to build fault-tolerant processes is inevitable. The automation CoE formalizes internal guard rails by defining business continuity plans if a failure occurs.

Level 400 – Capable

In this phase: Strategic benchmarking, technology-driven optimization, "business led, CoE supported"

In the Capable phase, the organization has established processes for monitoring and managing automation health from both a quantitative and a qualitative perspective. The organization is successful in democratizing automation across both business and technical verticals. Automation initiatives shift; no longer driven by the CoE, now citizen developers drive them. The organization builds on and enriches its technology capabilities. Process mining tools are used to optimize processes, and pro developers collaborate to build APIs that enable citizen developers to build automation. AI-based capabilities are implemented to solve business problems in the context of process automation. Organizations can attend to a wider array of use cases based on the fusion of technologies.

Level 500 – Efficient

In this phase: Community beacons, cross-team collaboration, addressing gaps hindering excellence

In the Efficient phase, the organization is at a mature state in its automation journey from a business process, technology enablement, and automation adoption perspective. In the context of automation, the organization has established its capabilities to harmoniously integrate Power Automate into its digital landscape. Governance, security, KPI dashboarding, and application lifecycle management are thoroughly automated, with minimal to no manual effort required to sustain them.

A well-established community of experts helps to resolve issues and questions that citizen developers have. Fusion teams involving experts from cloud, AI, and other capabilities collaborate to build elegant automation processes that build on the benefits that the combination of these technologies offers. Organizations at the efficient phase have executive sponsorship and they play a pivotal role in the digitization of the organization. Efficient organizations serve as beacons for other organizations, sharing best practices and helping them to overcome any challenges they may face.

Automation maturity model details

The detailed Automation Maturity Model captures goals, indicators, and required resources across the various phases of maturity.

Next step: Detailed capabilities

Resources for rolling out an automation program

Customer Stories

Learning resources