Quality Gates or Bust: Marrying the Business Process Catalog with Success by Design

Why are we still serving raw brisket to finance?

If you have ever dragged a brisket off the smoker two hours early because the guests were hungry, you know the look people give when the center is still purple. ERP projects do this all the time. We configure for months, race toward go live, then discover that AP tolerance rules were never finalized, batch jobs have never been volume tested, and half the warehouse team has the wrong license. That is serving raw meat to the judges.

This month we have been working through the Business Process Catalog (BPC). The catalog gives you a scoped menu with named cuts and unique IDs across Dynamics 365 workloads. Microsoft’s Success by Design (SbD) framework exists to pause the cook, probe temperatures, and surface risk before you plate the meal. The smartest teams connect the two: every in‑scope BPC row must clear clearly defined quality gates that align with SbD reviews.

When you do that, you stop hoping and start knowing.

What is a quality gate in the Dynamics 365 world?

A quality gate is a decision point that requires objective evidence before a project may advance to the next phase. That evidence can be documents, configurations demonstrated in an environment, test results, or signed risk acceptances. It is not a status meeting. It is not a color on a slide. You either have the proof or you do not.

Microsoft’s Success by Design framework is built around structured review workshops that force this evidence. Core SbD reviews include Solution Blueprint, Implementation topic reviews like Security, Integration, Data, and Extensibility, Performance and Scale, and Go Live Readiness. Each review guides partners and customers to validate architecture, operational fit, scale, and readiness before investing further downstream. The guidance is prescriptive and comes out of thousands of FastTrack implementations, which means the review content is rooted in failures Microsoft has already seen and wants you to avoid.

Quality gating is not tied to one delivery methodology. Whether you run waterfall stage gates, agile sprints, or a hybrid approach, SbD reviews sit alongside your cadence and inject evidence at the right time. Microsoft’s Go Live documentation for finance and operations apps makes this explicit: all customers must complete a Go Live Readiness Review with Microsoft FastTrack before production environments can be deployed. That is a formal quality gate.

The AND stack: BPC + Implementation Portal + LCS

Projects run best when these three Microsoft assets work together.

Business Process Catalog (BPC). This Excel workbook is Microsoft’s cross‑app index of end to end scenarios, process areas, and business processes. It is updated at least four times a year and is downloadable for your own use. Because every row carries a stable ID, teams stop arguing over what to call things and start deciding how to implement them.

Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal. The portal is the self‑service SbD workspace. You create engagements, add project users, set up your Project Profile, answer review questionnaires, and access guidance that is filtered to the workloads you selected. It brings the SbD review content out of email and into a structured space that tracks status and artifacts across your program.

Lifecycle Services (LCS). LCS manages environments, deployable packages, configuration data, and monitoring. When you prepare for production cutover, Microsoft instructs you to complete the Go Live Readiness Review and validate readiness in LCS before deployment. In short: BPC tells you what must work, the Implementation Portal helps you prove it, and LCS is where the working bits actually live.

Think of it like this:

BPC is the meat order

Implementation Portal is the judging schedule and score sheets

LCS is the smoker, fuel, and thermometers.

Skip one and you are guessing on doneness.

The four core gates

Ok, we talked about gates above, but let's go into details on each one. I sure hope everyone knows the stages of competition BBQ or else this analogy won't work.

Gate 0 – Solution Blueprint (Trim and season)

Purpose. Align on what you are cooking. Gate 0 confirms scope, architecture direction, non‑functional requirements, and product fit before serious build effort. If you skip trimming, the fat renders unevenly and the cook stalls. Same with ERP configuration that chases undefined scope.

SbD driver. The SbD Solution Blueprint review is designed to establish the foundation for the project. It ensures that the proposed solution architecture aligns with business objectives, cloud service capabilities, and cross‑workload dependencies. It is the workshop where you surface assumptions, map integrations at a high level, and capture the initial risk register that powers later topic reviews.

Inputs. Initial BPC slice grouped by Scenario. Integration landscape sketches. Localization list. Data domain inventory. Preliminary performance sizing assumptions. Early license sizing draft.

Activities. Classify every BPC Scenario and Process: adopt out of the box, configure with parameters, extend, bring an ISV, or de‑scope. Document the rationale. Identify where cross‑workload processes cross application boundaries (for example, field service work orders invoiced in finance). Note data sources and master record ownership. Capture high risk customizations and unresolved decisions.

Evidence to pass. Completed Solution Blueprint template or equivalent deck stored in the Implementation Portal review record. Scope disposition table that references BPC IDs. Initial environment strategy in LCS. Draft license sizing summary for procurement review. Open risks logged and owned.

Good sign. Stakeholders can answer "Which BPC IDs are we not doing and why?" without looking at each other. Weak sign: Functionals say "we will figure that out in design." If you do not trim now you carve burnt fat later.

Gate 1 – Build Validation (Mid‑smoke wrap)

Purpose. Confirm that what you configured and extended matches the blueprint before you pour more fuel into training, data loads, or integrations at scale. In BBQ this is when you check bark and wrap to hold moisture. In projects it is when you check that parameters, security roles, extensions, and data design tell the same story you approved.

SbD drivers. SbD implementation topic reviews dig into critical build areas: Security, Integration, Data, Extensibility, and others. These structured questions expose misalignment between the blueprint and the actual configuration and help teams correct early.

Inputs. Configured sandbox environments (deployed through LCS). Recorded prototypes or Task Recorder captures of representative BPC Processes. Extension code branches or solution layers. Data models and entity mappings. Updated license mapping vs security roles.

Activities. Demonstrate each high priority BPC Process in the configured system. Show parameter screenshots that prove design choices. Review integration payload shapes and error handling. Validate security role assignments and confirm that license tiers still line up. Identify where extensions diverged from blueprint assumptions. Update the risk and decision log in the Implementation Portal.

Evidence to pass. Completed SbD topic review questionnaires with attachments. Variance log vs blueprint. Updated license counts and impacts. Initial test scripts tagged to BPC IDs. Confirmed data migration design and transformation rules.

Good sign. When you replay the blueprint assumptions slide and the system you show looks like the slide. Weak sign: "We have most of that but did something different because of X" and no documentation. Better to re‑trim now than to discover dry brisket at the judges table.

Gate 2 – Performance and Cutover Readiness (Probe and rest)

Purpose. Stress the system at scale and choreograph the move to production. A brisket can look perfect wrapped but still be 20 degrees low inside. You probe for internal temperature and you let it rest or it leaks everywhere. Gate 2 is where you prove throughput, rehearse data migration, and finalize cutover steps.

SbD drivers. The SbD Performance and Scale review focuses on load, concurrency, batch processing, and capacity planning. Microsoft’s Go Live preparation guidance adds cutover rehearsal expectations, data migration readiness, and environment validation steps that must be complete before requesting production deployment.

Inputs. Performance test plans keyed to volume drivers in your BPC matrix (for example invoices per hour, lines per batch). Batch schedule designs with estimated durations. Data migration rehearsal results that show record counts and variance. Integration throughput logs. Production‑sized environment or scaled perf environment in LCS.

Activities. Execute load tests that represent peak and sustained transaction levels for the BPC Processes marked high volume. Validate batch windows complete inside agreed SLA. Run at least one full data migration rehearsal and reconcile counts to source systems. Dry run cutover weekend tasks with timestamps and contingency steps. Capture metrics and screenshots.

Evidence to pass. Performance results meeting or risk‑accepted against targets. Reconciliation variance within agreed tolerance. Signed cutover runbook stored with the Performance or Go Live review in the Implementation Portal. Environment health checks in LCS green. Decision log updated for any shortfalls.

Good sign. Team can quote throughput numbers by memory and knows which batches are on the critical path. Weak sign: "We have not tried that volume yet." If the brisket has not hit temp you do not slice. Same rule.

Gate 3 – Go Live Readiness (Turn‑in box)

Purpose. Final call. Are you ready to serve production users. At the cook‑off turn‑in table you cannot apologize for undercooked meat. You slide the box and take the score. Gate 3 is that moment for your ERP launch.

SbD drivers. Microsoft requires a Go Live Readiness Review for all finance and operations apps customers before production deployment. The review checks functional readiness, technical preparedness, data migration status, support model, and risk mitigations. The Implementation Portal delivers the questionnaire and submission flow used by FastTrack and by self‑service customers to complete this milestone.

Inputs. UAT sign off by process. Training completion percentages by role. Open defect list by severity. Final data migration rehearsal results. License assignment status mapped to security roles. Environment deployment readiness in LCS.

Activities. Complete the Go Live questionnaire in the Implementation Portal. Validate that all in‑scope BPC IDs have passed testing or have agreed workarounds. Confirm that integrations are pointed to production endpoints for cutover. Review support handoff, escalation paths, and monitoring coverage. Recheck license assignment. Microsoft has announced in‑app unlicensed user notifications starting September 1 2025 and hard enforcement November 1 2025, so going live with large unlicensed populations invites disruption.

Evidence to pass. Signed executive go/no go. Production deployment window scheduled in LCS. Critical severity open defects below tolerance. License compliance above agreed threshold. All required SbD review artifacts attached. When you slide this box you are telling the judges the cook is done.

Building the gate scorecard

You would never run a competition smoke without logging pit temperature, stall time, and wrap hour. Do the same for your project. Create a scorecard you update weekly once Gate 0 completes. Recommended columns: Gate, % BPC IDs cleared, % BPC IDs mapped to test cases, Performance metric vs target, Data reconciliation %, License assignment %, Training coverage %, Top risks, Decision.

The SbD guidance encourages evidence‑based risk tracking; the Go Live docs require readiness proof; the Microsoft license management update means license percentage matters as a tracked metric long before cutover. If license compliance drops below plan and the September and November 2025 milestones loom, you mark it red and act.

Governance rhythm – who stamps the gate?

Quality is not an IT sport. Invite the right judges. For each gate hold a formal review with the Executive Sponsor, Project Director, Functional Lead, Technical Lead, Data Lead, Change and Training Lead, and Licensing or Finance owner. SbD reviews are built for cross discipline discussion so functional, technical, and business voices surface risk together.

The Go Live readiness process in Microsoft guidance explicitly calls for coordination between project leadership and Microsoft prior to production deployment, reinforcing that multi role sign off is expected. Maintain minutes and decisions in the Implementation Portal record so history is preserved when team members roll off.

Anti patterns and course corrections

• You held the SbD workshop but logged no actions.

  • Fix: mark gate incomplete until mitigations are captured in the Portal record.

• New customization requested after Gate 0 but never re reviewed.

  • Fix: update the Gate Matrix and run a mini Gate 1 or 2 review before build.

• No named license mapping until cutover; enforcement milestones trigger last minute scramble.

  • Fix: add license percentage metrics to Gate 1 and Gate 3; monitor quarterly.

• Skipped load test because "users are light." Post go live slowdowns prove otherwise.

  • Fix: Gate 2 requires performance evidence before go decision.

    
    

Keep your gates tight and your ribs low and slow, my friends.

DynamicsDad