Introduction to Power BI Governance
Power BI is a powerful, flexible tool for business intelligence and analytics. However, to harness its full potential, organizations must implement robust governance practices. Otherwise, a tool like Power BI can quickly grow uncontrollably!
Effective Power BI governance ensures the platform is used efficiently, securely, and in alignment with strategic goals, while maintaining data quality and consistency across the organization.
Sparke has helped companies set up governance practices that fit to their organization. In this blog we want to describe the key aspects of a successful Power BI Governance.
Key Elements of Power BI Governance
- Setup: Do you have a governance team & setup?
- Alignment: Is the governance aligned with existing policies?
- Data Culture: How does your Power BI setup play into data culture initiatives?
- Content Creation: How do you manage and create Power BI semantic models and reports?
- Access Control: Who has access to what?
- Data Quality: Can users trust your data?
- Data Security: Is your data / information protected from getting into the wrong hands?
- Data Gateway: A central component of the Power BI Suite, how do you manage it?
- Tenant Administration: Vital settings that affect your entire organization!
- Training & Support: Are users trained and do you have support in place?
Company-wide policies vs. Power BI Governance
Effective Power BI governance must align with your organization’s existing strategies and policies. Dimensions such as data culture, quality and security are all aspects that need to be spanning the entire organization – nevertheless there are aspects in the Power BI Governance that drive these dimensions. Ideally, your Power BI Governance is set up in a way that it leverages existing functionalities to support data quality assessments (e.g. by endorsing semantic models) or ensure data is not leaked (sensitivity labels in Power BI). Hence, for this overlap it is important that the governance aligns with existing policies, while using functionalities in Power BI that support it.
To learn more about data culture, be sure to check out our other blogpost:
Building a Successful Data Culture: Key Components and Implementation Strategies
Collaboration and Governance Team
A successful governance framework requires a dedicated governance team. This is one of the first and most important steps when setting up a governance framework. This team should have the time and resources needed to:
- Drive the adoption of governance practices.
- Monitor the effectiveness of the framework.
- Adapt policies and processes as business needs evolve.
Power BI Governance Maturity Model
At Spark Consulting, we’ve developed a maturity model to evaluate and improve Power BI governance. Each weighted dimension is evaluated based on subareas. That way you can identify strengths, areas for improvement, and it allows a monitoring of your governance. The below table shows you the subareas for each dimension. The maximum score a company can achieve overall and for each dimension is 10 points.
Hot tip: Make use of the technique to integrate KPI Definitions directly into Power BI. Check our Blog: Integrate KPI Definitions into Power BI
To get the full governance framework Excel Sheet and run an evaluation for your organization – contact us! We are happy to provide you with the documents and tools to get you started.
Benefits of Effective Power BI Governance
- Improved and controlled content creation: Processes ensure that your reports follow a corporate theme, naming convention and are checked for data quality before being released!
- Improved Data Security and Compliance: Protect sensitive information and ensure compliance with regulations.
- Enhanced User Adoption: Encourage organization-wide use of Power BI through robust training and support – your users will thank you!
- Scalability: Enable your governance practices to grow alongside your organization’s data needs – without growing our of proportion.
- Documentation where it matters: Your tenant administration and other important areas are documented, without creating heaps of documents.
- Maximize value generation: Processes, collaboration and leveraging built-in functionalities in Power BI ensure that you maximize the value from your investment in Power BI!
Conclusion
Power BI governance is more than a set of rules—it’s a framework that ensures your business intelligence practices are efficient, secure, and aligned with organizational goals. By focusing on data quality, user empowerment, and alignment with existing strategies, your organization can maximize the value of Power BI.
At Spark Consulting, we specialize in helping businesses establish and enhance their Power BI governance. Contact us today to make the most out of Power BI!
Contact us
Ready to implement your power BI governance or elevate it to the next level? We are happy to help