Every app is a unique snowflake.

From a distance many of them look the same, and even up close they tend to look similar, but each one is unique – and you cannot treat them all the same.

This post and video take a closer^[1] look at the topic introduced when we looked at picking your battles for a successful data culture. Where that post and video looked at more general concepts, this video looks at specific techniques and examples used by successful enterprise Power BI customers around the world.

I won’t attempt to reproduce here everything that’s in the video, but I do want to share two diagrams^[2] that represent how one organization has structured their community of practice uses Power BI, and how their Power BI COE supports and enables it. I chose this example because it hews closely to the standard successful approach I see with dozens of large organizations building their data culture around Power BI, but also puts the generic approach into a specific and real context.

This first diagram shows the “rings” of BI within the organization, with personal BI at the outside and enterprise BI on the inside. Each ring represents a specific point on the more control / less control spectrum introduced in earlier videos, and demonstrates how one large organization thinks about the consistent and well-defined criteria and responsibilities represented by points on that spectrum.

This second diagram “explodes” the inner ring to show how a given application may mature. This organization has well-defined entry points for self-service BI authors to engage with the central BI team to promote and operationalize reports and data that originate with business authors, and a well-defined path for each app to follow… but they also understand that not every app will follow the path to the end. Some apps don’t need to be fully IT-supported solutions, because their usage, impact, and value doesn’t justify the up-front and ongoing work this would require. Some do, because they’re more important.

It depends.

And the key factor that this organization – and other successful organizations like them – realizes, is that they can put in place processes like the ones illustrated above that examine the factors on which it depends for them, and take appropriate action.

On a case by case, app by app basis.

Because one size will never fit all.

^[1] And longer – at nearly 23 minutes, this is by far the longest video in the series.

^[2] If you’re ever feeling impostor syndrome please remember that I created these diagrams using SmartArt in PowerPoint, looked at them, and exclaimed “that looks great!” before publishing them publicly where thousands of people would likely see them.