Forum Discussion
Build It Yourself? Part 1: A Proportionate Architecture
How can a smaller nonprofit organisation centralise data for people who haven't been hired yet, working in departments that don't exist yet, doing work that no one has thought of yet?
Here’s the architecture for a possible solution that takes advantage of Microsoft's shared responsibility policies. I will go on to test to see if it’s feasible for a small nonprofit organisation with self-taught IT champions.
https://headandheart.info/in-practice/20260714-build-it-yourself-part-1-a-proportionate-architecture/
3 Replies
I think the key is building for flexibility rather than trying to predict every future role or department. A shared data structure can provide a useful foundation as the organisation grows. Keeping permissions role-based should also make future changes much easier to manage.
I think starting simple makes more sense, especially for a small team. I made the same mistake on my own https://chronoagecalculator.com/ by trying to plan for too many things at the start. In the end, keeping it simplee made updates much easyer. You can always add more later if you neeed it.
Certainly, start as simple as you can. But if you're starting out with a collection of siloed, sensitive data in various teams' spreadsheets, then you've already developed a complex system.
In that scenario, this is one way of simplifying things. Bring everything together into a single source of truth, and develop just what you need to operate.
