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Microsoft Fabric adoption roadmap conclusion

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Note

This article forms part of the Microsoft Fabric adoption roadmap series of articles. For an overview of the series, see Microsoft Fabric adoption roadmap.

This article concludes the series on Microsoft Fabric adoption. The strategic and tactical considerations and action items presented in this series will assist you in your analytics adoption efforts, and with creating a productive data culture in your organization.

This series covered the following aspects of Fabric adoption.

The rest of this article includes suggested next actions to take. It also includes other adoption-related resources that you might find valuable.

Next actions to take

It can be overwhelming to decide where to start. The following series of steps provides a process to help you approach your next actions.

  1. Learn: First, read this series of articles end-to-end. Become familiar with the strategic and tactical considerations and action items that directly lead to successful analytics adoption. They'll help you to build a data culture in your organization. Discuss the concepts with your colleagues.
  2. Assess current state: For each area of the adoption roadmap, assess your current state. Document your findings. Your goal is to have full clarity on where you're now so that you can make informed decisions about what to do next.
  3. Clarify your strategic goals: Ensure that you're clear on what your organization's goals are for adopting Fabric. Confirm that your adoption and data culture goals align with your organization's broader strategic goals for the use of data, analytics, and business intelligence (BI) in general. Focus on what your immediate strategy is for the next 3-12 months. For more information about defining your goals, see the strategic planning article.
  4. Prioritize: Clarify what's most important to achieve in the next 12-18 months. For instance, you might identify specific user enablement or risk reduction areas that are a higher priority than other areas. Determine which advancements in maturity levels you should prioritize first. For more information about defining your priorities, see the strategic planning article.
  5. Identify future state: For each area of the roadmap, identify the gaps between what you want to happen (your future state) and what's happening (your current state). Focus on the next 12-18 months for identifying your desired future state.
  6. Customize maturity levels: Using the information you have on your strategy and future state, customize the maturity levels for each area of the roadmap. Update or delete the description for each maturity level so that they're realistic, based on your goals and strategy. Your current state, priorities, staffing, and funding will influence the time and effort it will take to advance to higher maturity levels.
  7. Define measurable objectives: Create KPIs (key performance indicators) or OKRs (objectives and key results) to define specific goals for the next quarter. Ensure that the objectives have clear owners, are measurable, time-bound, and achievable. Confirm that each objective aligns with your strategic BI goals and priorities.
  8. Create tactical plans: Add specific action items to your project plan. Action items will identify who will do what, and when. Include short, medium, and longer-term (backlog) items in your project plan to make it easy to track and reprioritize.
  9. Track action items: Use your preferred project planning software to track continual, incremental progress of your action items. Summarize progress and status every quarter for your executive sponsor.
  10. Adjust: As new information becomes available—and as priorities change—reevaluate and adjust your focus. Reexamine your strategic goals, objectives, and action items once a quarter so you're certain that you're focusing on the right actions.
  11. Celebrate: Pause regularly to appreciate your progress. Celebrate your wins. Reward and recognize people who take the initiative and help achieve your goals. Encourage healthy partnerships between IT and the different areas of the business.
  12. Repeat: Continue learning, experimenting, and adjusting as you progress with your implementation. Use feedback loops to continually learn from everyone in the organization. Ensure that continual, gradual, improvement is a priority.

A few important key points are implied within the previous suggestions.

  • Focus on the near term: Although it's important to have an eye on the big picture, we recommend that you focus primarily on the next quarter, next semester, and next year. It's easier to assess, plan, and act when you focus on the near term.
  • Progress will be incremental: Changes that happen every day, every week, and every month add up over time. It's easy to become discouraged and sense a lack of progress when you're working on a large adoption initiative that takes time. If you keep track of your incremental progress, you'll be surprised at how much you can accomplish over the course of a year.
  • Changes will continually happen: Be prepared to reconsider decisions that you make, perhaps every quarter. It's easier to cope with continual change when you expect the plan to change.
  • Everything correlates together: As you progress through each of the steps listed above, it's important that everything's correlated from the high-level strategic organizational objectives, all the way down to more detailed action items. That way, you'll know that you're working on the right things.

Power BI implementation planning

Successfully implementing analytics throughout the organization requires deliberate thought and planning. The Power BI implementation planning series of articles, which is a work in progress, is intended to complement the Microsoft Fabric adoption roadmap. It includes key considerations, actions, decision-making criteria, recommendations, and it describes implementation patterns for important common usage scenarios.

Power BI adoption framework

The Power BI adoption framework describes additional aspects of how to adopt Power BI in more detail. The original intent of the framework was to support Microsoft partners with a lightweight set of resources for use when helping their customers deploy and adopt Power BI.

The framework can augment this Microsoft Fabric adoption roadmap series. The roadmap series focuses on the why and what of adopting Fabric, more so than the how.

Note

When completed, the Power BI implementation planning series (described in the previous section) will replace the Power BI adoption framework.

Microsoft's BI transformation

Consider reading about Microsoft's journey and experience with driving a data culture. This article describes the importance of two terms: discipline at the core and flexibility at the edge. It also shares Microsoft's views and experience about the importance of establishing a COE.

Power Platform adoption

The Power Platform team has an excellent set of adoption-related content. Its primary focus is on Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents. Many of the ideas presented in this content can be applied to Power BI also.

The Power CAT Adoption Maturity Model, published by the Power CAT team, describes repeatable patterns for successful Power Platform adoption.

The Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit is a collection of components and tools to help you develop a strategy for adopting and supporting Microsoft Power Platform.

The Power Platform adoption best practices includes a helpful set of documentation and best practices to help you align business and technical strategies.

The Power Platform adoption framework is a community-driven project with excellent resources on adoption of Power Platform services at scale.

Microsoft 365 and Azure adoption

You might also find useful adoption-related guidance published by other Microsoft technology teams.

A wide variety of other adoption guides for individual technologies can be found online. A few examples include:

Industry guidance

The Data Management Book of Knowledge (DMBOK2) is a book available for purchase from DAMA International. It contains a wealth of information about maturing your data management practices.

Note

The additional resources provided in this article aren't required to take advantage of the guidance provided in this Fabric adoption series. They're reputable resources should you wish to continue your journey.

Partner community

Experienced partners are available to help your organization succeed with adoption initiatives. To engage a partner, visit the Power BI partner portal.