Agent Sprawl Is Creating Tomorrow's Technical Debt Today

October 20, 2026

Agent sprawl is real, creating a business risk before organizations recognize it. Companies turn over the keys to Copilot Studio and suddenly citizen developers go and create multitudes of agents that are experimental, redundant, and possibly not even needed. Agents are the cool new toy in the M365 toybox, but that doesn't mean the agents that builders build should get free rein across your organization's data, budget, and workflows.

What I am seeing more and more as companies hurtle toward using AI in their day-to-day work is that there is less focus on governance than there needs to be. Governance can be seen as a roadblock. Tuned incorrectly, it can become a bottleneck. But when you're sitting back wondering why your multi-thousand-dollar investment in AI is not increasing productivity, you'll wonder why you didn't take it more seriously.

And we've seen similar stories play out like this before. Many companies are still grappling with a sprawling SharePoint ecosystem, redundant Teams, and messy information architecture. It's human nature to rush out and try the cool new thing. But without guardrails or guidance, the system becomes chaotic and difficult, if not impossible, to manage.  

Governance has been applied to retention policies, documents, and other information. But it's really much more than that. It guides the creation of PowerApps, Teams, and SharePoint sites. And it should be applied deliberately towards agents, because their design, usage, licensing, and billing model can create financial and operational exposure if no one is monitoring them.  

You need to have a controlled process where users can submit their agents for review and approval. There needs to be a clear reason that an agent, especially one that uses credits, exists. It needs to have a clear owner and credible case for business value. And the person building the agent may not always see the larger picture. They are focused on solving a problem they are experiencing. The review process adds the broader enterprise perspective needed to identify duplication and assess risk.

The approvers need to ask:

• Is there a real business need?

• Will this really save time for my employees?

• How do we know when and if the agent will use credits?

• Who will have access to it and how often will they use it?

• Can we solve this efficiently without building an agent?

  
  
  
  

Approval is only the beginning. Every production agent should have a named owner, documented data access, defined success measures, a review schedule, and a retirement path. If usage, cost, accuracy, or business need changes, the organization should be able to modify, suspend, or retire the agent before it becomes another unmanaged asset. 

These are critical questions that should be answered up front before anyone opens Copilot Studio.