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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.
A data or analytics Center of Excellence (COE) is an internal team of technical and business experts. The team actively assists others within the organization who are working with data. The COE forms the nucleus of the broader community to advance adoption goals, which align with the data culture vision.
A COE might also be known as competency center, capability center, or a center of expertise. Some organizations use the term squad. Many organizations perform the COE responsibilities within their data, analytics, or business intelligence (BI) team.
Note
Having a COE team formally recognized in your organizational chart is recommended, but not required. What's most important is that the COE roles and responsibilities are identified, prioritized, and assigned. It's common for a centralized data or analytics team to take on many of the COE responsibilities; some responsibilities might also reside within IT. For simplicity, in this series of articles, COE means a specific group of people, although you might implement it differently. It's also very common to implement the COE with a scope broader than Fabric or Power BI alone: for instance, a Power Platform COE, a data COE, or an analytics COE.
Goals for a COE include:
Important
One of the most powerful aspects of a COE is the cross-departmental insight into how analytics tools like Fabric are used by the organization. This insight can reveal which practices work well and which don't, that can facilitate a bottom-up approach to governance. A primary goal of the COE is to learn which practices work well, share that knowledge more broadly, and replicate best practices across the organization.
The scope of COE responsibilities can vary significantly between organizations. In a way, a COE can be thought of as a consultancy service because its members routinely provide expert advice to the internal community of users. To varying degrees, most COEs handle hands-on work too.
Common COE responsibilities include:
People who are good candidates as COE members tend to be those who:
Tip
If you have self-service content creators in your organization who constantly push the boundaries of what can be done, they might be a great candidate to become a recognized champion, or perhaps even a satellite member of the COE.
When recruiting for the COE, it's important to have a mix of complementary analytical skills, technical skills, and business skills.
Very generalized roles within a COE are listed below. It's common for multiple people to overlap roles, which is useful from a backup and cross-training perspective. It's also common for the same person to serve multiple roles. For instance, most COE members also serve as a coach or mentor.
Role | Description |
---|---|
COE leader | Manages the day-to-day operations of the COE. Interacts with the executive sponsor and other organizational teams, such as the data governance board, as necessary. For an overview of additional roles and responsibilities, see the Governance article. |
Coach | Coaches and educates others on data and BI skills via office hours (community engagement), best practices reviews, or co-development projects. Oversees and participates in the discussion channel of the internal community. Interacts with, and supports, the champions network. |
Trainer | Develops, curates, and delivers internal training materials, documentation, and resources. |
Data analyst | Domain-specific subject matter expert. Acts as a liaison between the COE and the business unit. Content creator for the business unit. Assists with content certification. Works on co-development projects and proofs of concept. |
Data modeler | Creates and manages data assets (such as shared semantic model and dataflows) to support other self-service content creators. |
Report creator | Creates and publishes reports, dashboards, and metrics. |
Data engineer | Plans for deployment and architecture, including integration with other services and data platforms. Publishes data assets which are utilized broadly across the organization (such as a lakehouse, data warehouse, data pipeline, dataflow, or semantic model). |
User support | Assists with the resolution of data discrepancies and escalated help desk support issues. |
As mentioned previously, the scope of responsibilities for a COE can vary significantly between organizations. Therefore, the roles found for COE members can vary too.
The selected COE structure can vary among organizations. It's also possible for multiple structures to exist inside of a single large organization. That's particularly true when there are subsidiaries or when acquisitions have occurred.
Note
The following terms might differ to those defined for your organization, particularly the meaning of federated, which tends to have many different IT-related meanings.
A centralized COE comprises a single shared services team.
Pros:
Cons:
A unified COE is a single, centralized, shared services team that has been expanded to include embedded team members. The embedded team members are dedicated to supporting a specific functional area or business unit.
Pros:
Cons:
A federated COE comprises a shared services team (the core COE members) plus satellite members from each functional area or major business unit. A federated team works in coordination, even though its members reside in different business units. Typically, satellite members are primarily focused on development activities to support their business unit while the shared services personnel support the entire community.
Pros:
Cons:
Tip
Some organizations have success by using a rotational program. It involves federated members joining the core COE for a period of time, such as six months. This type of program allows federated members to learn best practices and understand more deeply how and why things are done. Although each federated member remains focused on their specific business unit, they gain a deeper understanding of the organization's challenges. This deeper understanding leads to a more productive partnership over time.
Decentralized COEs are independently managed by business units.
Pros:
Cons:
Important
A highly centralized COE tends to be more authoritarian, while highly decentralized COEs tend to be more siloed. Each organization will need to weigh the pros and cons that apply to them to determine the best choice. For most organizations, the most effective approach tends to be the unified or federated, which bridges organizational boundaries.
The COE might obtain its operating budget in multiple ways:
When the COE operates as a cost center, it absorbs the operating costs. Generally, it involves an approved annual budget. Sometimes this is called a push engagement model.
When the COE operates as a profit center (for at least part of its budget), it could accept projects throughout the year based on funding from other business units. Sometimes this is called a pull engagement model.
Funding is important because it impacts the way the COE communicates and engages with the internal community. As the COE experiences more and more successes, they might receive more requests from business units for help. It's especially the case as awareness grows throughout the organization.
Tip
The choice of funding model can determine how the COE actively grows its influence and ability to help. The funding model can also have a big impact on where authority resides and how decision-making works. Further, it impacts the types of services a COE can offer, such as co-development projects and/or best practices reviews. For more information, see the Mentoring and user enablement article.
Some organizations cover the COE operating costs with chargebacks to business units based on the usage goals of Fabric. For a shared capacity, this could be based on number of active users. For Premium capacity, chargebacks could be allocated based on which business units are using the capacity. Ideally, chargebacks are directly correlated to the business value gained.
Important
At times this article refers to Power BI Premium or its capacity subscriptions (P SKUs). Be aware that Microsoft is currently consolidating purchase options and retiring the Power BI Premium per capacity SKUs. New and existing customers should consider purchasing Fabric capacity subscriptions (F SKUs) instead.
For more information, see Important update coming to Power BI Premium licensing and Power BI Premium FAQ.
Checklist - Considerations and key actions you can take to establish or improve your COE.
Use questions like those found below to assess the effectiveness of a COE.
The following maturity levels will help you assess the current state of your COE.
Level | State of the Center of Excellence |
---|---|
100: Initial | • One or more COEs exist, or the activities are performed within the data team, BI team, or IT. There's no clarity on the specific goals nor expectations for responsibilities. • Requests for assistance from the COE are handled in an unplanned manner. |
200: Repeatable | • The COE is in place with a specific charter to mentor, guide, and educate self-service users. The COE seeks to maximize benefits of self-service approaches to data and BI while reducing the risks. • The goals, scope of responsibilities, staffing, structure, and funding model are established for the COE. |
300: Defined | • The COE operates with active involvement from all business units in a unified or federated mode. |
400: Capable | • The goals of the COE align with organizational goals, and they are reassessed regularly. • The COE is well-known throughout the organization, and consistently proves its value to the internal user community. |
500: Efficient | • Regular reviews of KPIs or OKRs evaluate COE effectiveness in a measurable way. • Agility and implementing continual improvements from lessons learned (including scaling out methods that work) are top priorities for the COE. |
In the next article in the Microsoft Fabric adoption roadmap series, learn about implementing governance guidelines, policies, and processes.
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