Migrating everything to PowerShell Universal - Including humans! - Björn Sundling - PSConfEU 2026

PowerShell Conference EU June 1-4, 2026 Dorint Pallas Wiesbaden https://github.com/psconfeu/2026 (slides, code) Björn introduces a case study about replacing a fragmented deployment environment with PowerShell Universal, but he frames the session mainly around the human side of adoption. He explains that the goal is not only to rebuild technical tooling, but also to help people learn the system and become willing to use it. He then describes how the team first had to discover what the existing environment actually contained. The deployment setup was spread across multiple technologies, repositories and even old computers, so the team gathered code from different places and decided that refactoring the old system would not be practical. Instead, they chose to replace it. Björn explains that they evaluated several tools and selected PowerShell Universal because it could support the kind of internal applications they needed. He outlines the training effort that followed, including PowerShell, Git and related tooling, and says this helped identify the people who were most interested in building and maintaining the new system. A large part of the talk focuses on reducing the barrier to contribution. Björn describes starting with simple apps and pages in PowerShell Universal, first using tabs and later pages, so that different people could own separate pieces of code. He emphasizes that short feedback loops, regular check-ins and small demonstrations helped the team improve the system gradually. He also discusses PowerShell Universal APIs as a way to let others build functionality without needing him in the middle. He gives an example where query-string parameters were mapped into PowerShell parameter blocks, which allowed another team member to create an API for deployment metadata. He says this was important because it made people more independent. Finally, Björn summarizes the main lessons: train people, make the path to contribution short, find allies, and accept that not everyone will want to adopt the new approach. He notes that some implementation choices were made for practicality rather than strict technical purity, and says the work is ongoing rather than finished. Chapters: 00:00:00 Migrating everything to PowerShell Universal - Including humans! - Björn Sundling - PSConfEU 2026 00:00:16 PowerShell Universal Story 00:01:56 The Broken Deployment System 00:05:15 Choosing a Full Replacement 00:07:56 Training the Team First 00:09:10 Building the First App 00:10:07 Scripts vs Apps 00:12:58 Winning Over End Users 00:15:56 Git Without the Friction 00:20:18 Expanding with Tabs and Pages 00:23:44 First API Success 00:28:02 Growing Adoption Naturally 00:30:08 Key Lessons Learned 00:34:22 Security and Elevation 00:36:24 Dynamic Pages Explained 00:38:30 Feedback Loops in Practice