Ownership transfer can occur in two ways: IT acquires a Power BI solution developed by the business (this is the most common) Business users adopt a Power BI prototype created during requirements discovery (i.e., during strategic prototyping sessions) Ownership Transfer Phases Following is a discussion of these phases in more detail, from both perspectives. IT Adoption Phase 1 – Publishing by Business When Power BI reports developed by the business contain data transformations, data models, and/or reporting views with potential to benefit a wider scope of enterprise BI delivery, IT may want to incorporate it into its own strategic initiatives. This phase assumes IT has clearly indicated their interest in adopting a Power BI report. During the first phase of ownership transfer, Power BI reports may be republished to a collaboration area that is being monitored by IT as well as business users. This will allow for a controlled benchmarking process to begin, as the Power BI report undergoes certification. This also means the business will commit to stop making changes until the ownership transfer is complete. IT Adoption Phase 2 – Certification The Power BI report is evaluated for compliance on three areas: Data Sources: Are these validated reporting sources, such as an enterprise data warehouse? Flat files and Excel sources may be replaced in some cases. Data Model: Are IT supported best practices being utilized? These could range from using standardized dimensional models to specific DAX authoring approaches. Report Layout: Compliance to corporate branding standards for look and feel, as well as presentation (such as rounding or scaling). Use ‘branding’ techniques to differentiate between who published the solution. If a Power BI report does not pass certification it will require IT’s effort to refactor it to ensure compliance. In other words, additional data integration, data warehousing, or data modeling efforts may be needed for IT to take over responsibility for the report and its underlying data.
Incremental improvements Based on feedback received from business users, incremental improvements and enhancements can be introduced. This may mean an additional data source, a new calculation, or new reports. Monitoring ---- Training --- Expansion Once value is being delivered, the solution remains being monitored. Ongoing training, support, and sharing of knowledge is important and should not be overlooked. Sample Roadmap: IT-Managed Self-Service BI The roadmap for IT-Managed SSBI follows the same methodology as the Corporate BI roadmap, with the following distinctions: If the ability to allow a user to personalize their own copy is desired, an organizational content pack can be created by IT which permits a user to save and personalize secondary copies of reports and dashboards in their own personal workspace area. Report and dashboard creation is handled by business users rather than IT. Some semantic layer creation (such as a data model in Power BI Desktop) may also be handled directly by business users to the extent that only sanctioned data sources are utilized (this distinction discussed earlier in this whitepaper). Annotations in Azure Data Catalog can, and should, be made by business users who work with data sources directly. Bibliography 1 Garvin, Edmonson, Gino. “Is yours a Learning Organization?” Harvard Business Review, March 2008: 2 TWDI Research. “Pervasive Business Intelligence” The Data Warehousing Institute, July, 2008: 3 Gartner IT Glossary.