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Power BI implementation planning

  • Article
  • 3 minutes to read

In this video, watch Matthew introduce you to the Power BI implementation planning series of articles.

Successfully implementing Power BI throughout the organization requires deliberate thought and planning. The Power BI implementation planning series is intended to help you accomplish your Power BI implementation. Its articles include key considerations, actions, decision-making criteria, recommendations, and they describe implementation patterns for important common usage scenarios.

Subject areas

When you implement Power BI, there are many subject areas to consider. The following subject areas form part of the Power BI implementation planning series:

  • BI strategy
  • User needs and opportunities
  • Authoring tools and user machines
  • Tenant setup
  • Subscriptions, licenses, and trials
  • Roles and responsibilities
  • Power BI service oversight
  • Workspaces
  • Data management
  • Content distribution and sharing
  • Change management and deployment
  • Security
  • Information protection and data loss prevention
  • Power BI Premium
  • Gateways
  • Integration with other services
  • Auditing and monitoring
  • Adoption tracking
  • Scaling and growing

Note

The series is a work in progress. We will gradually release new and updated articles over time.

Usage scenarios

The series includes usage scenarios that illustrate different ways that creators and consumers can deploy and use Power BI:

Purpose

When completed, the series will:

  • Complement the Power BI adoption roadmap, which describes considerations for successful Power BI adoption and a healthy data culture. Power BI implementation planning guidance that correlates with the adoption roadmap goals will be added to this series.
  • Replace the Planning a Power BI enterprise deployment white paper, which was designed to describe various technical factors when deploying Power BI. Relevant white paper content will be merged into this series in a new format that's more discoverable and actionable.
  • Replace the Power BI adoption framework (together with the Power BI adoption roadmap), which is a lightweight set of resources (videos and presentation slides) that were designed to help Microsoft partners deploy Power BI solutions for their customers. Relevant adoption framework action items will be merged into this series.

Recommendations

To set yourself up for success, we recommend that you work through the following steps:

  1. Read the complete Power BI adoption roadmap, familiarizing yourself with each roadmap subject area. Assess your current state of Power BI adoption, and gain clarity on the data culture objectives for your organization.
  2. Explore Power BI implementation planning articles that are relevant to you. Start with the Power BI usage scenarios, which convey how you can use Power BI in diverse ways. Be sure to understand which usage scenarios apply to your organization, and by whom. Also, consider how these usage scenarios may influence the implementation strategies you decide on.
  3. Read the articles for each of the subject areas that are listed above. You might choose to initially do a broad review of the contents from top to bottom. Or you may choose to start with subject areas that are your highest priority. Carefully review the key decisions and actions that are included for each topic (at the end of each section). We recommend that you use them as a starting point for creating and customizing your plan.
  4. When necessary, refer to Power BI documentation for details on specific topics.

Target audience

The intended audience of this series of articles may be interested in the following outcomes:

  • Identifying areas to improve or strengthen their Power BI implementation.
  • Increasing their ability to efficiently manage and securely deliver Power BI content.
  • Planning the implementation of Power BI within their organization.
  • Increasing their organization's return on investment (ROI) in Power BI.

This series is certain to be helpful for organizations that are in their early stages of a Power BI implementation or are planning an expanded implementation. It may also be helpful for those who work in an organization with one or more of the following characteristics:

  • Power BI has pockets of viral adoption and success in the organization, but it's not consistently well-managed or purposefully governed.
  • Power BI is deployed with some meaningful scale, but there are many unrealized opportunities for improvement.

Tip

Some knowledge of Power BI and general business intelligence concepts is assumed. To get the most from this content, we recommend that you become familiar with the Power BI adoption roadmap first.

Acknowledgments

This series of articles was written by Melissa Coates, Data Platform MVP and owner of Coates Data Strategies with significant contributions from Peter Myers, Matthew Roche, Alex Powers, and Chris Webb.

Next steps

In the next article in this series, learn about usage scenarios that describe how you can use Power BI in diverse ways.

Other helpful resources include:

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