What should the CoE actually do?
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BI Center of Excellence Starter
Do you need a Center of Excellence — or simply a better way to coordinate BI?
A pragmatic CoE design sized for the organisation you actually have, not the one in a maturity-model diagram.
DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?
Start with what is actually happening.
- Good practices exist, but mostly in people’s heads.
- Different teams reinvent the same solutions.
- Administration, enablement and development are disconnected.
- Nobody clearly owns the BI community or shared standards.
- The idea of a CoE exists, but its actual purpose is vague.
WHAT WE NEED TO ANSWER
Good work starts with better questions.
What should remain decentralised?
Which services will create the most value first?
How do you avoid becoming a governance bottleneck?
WHAT WE DESIGN
The scope follows the problem.
I do not force every engagement through the same checklist. These are the areas that may matter; the agreed scope determines how deep we go.
CoE mission and boundaries
Service catalogue
Roles and responsibilities
Governance responsibilities
Community and office hours
Enablement and standards
Platform administration interfaces
Initial measures of success
WHAT YOU GET
Something you can use after the conversation ends.
The output should help you make a decision, change a practice or move the work forward. It should not exist simply to prove that work happened.
CoE Mission & Scope
A clear answer to why the CoE exists and what it does not own.
Service Catalogue
The concrete services people can expect from the CoE.
Roles & Responsibilities
Who drives platform, standards, enablement, community and product ownership.
Community Model
How knowledge and feedback move across central and decentralised teams.
Initial Roadmap
A small number of priorities for getting the model working in practice.
HOW IT WORKS
Enough structure to make the work clear. Not so much process that the process becomes the work.
Context
We start with a short conversation about what is happening, what matters and what has already been tried.
Review
I analyse the relevant parts of the solution or operating model at the depth agreed for the engagement.
Prioritise
I organise observations around impact, risk and usefulness — not around how many issues I can find.
Walkthrough
We go through the findings together, challenge assumptions and discuss trade-offs.
Next step
You decide what happens next: implement internally, continue together or stop because the focused engagement was enough.
YOUR TIME COMMITMENT
I keep the client-side time demand deliberately light. A focused assessment usually needs a kickoff conversation, access or materials, and a final review session. We agree the exact involvement before we start.
A GOOD FIT WHEN
This is likely to help if...
- Power BI/Fabric is used across several teams or functions.
- You need coordination without turning the central team into a gatekeeper.
- You want an operating model before adding more process.
IT MAY NOT BE THE RIGHT FIT IF
- You only need a governance document with no change to team responsibilities.
- Your BI function is still a very small single-team setup with no cross-team coordination need.
If the problem is real but the format is wrong, that is useful to know early. I would rather redirect the conversation than force the challenge into the wrong service.
BI CENTER OF EXCELLENCE STARTER
Do you need a Center of Excellence — or simply a better way to coordinate BI?
Bring me the problem, not a polished brief. A few sentences about what is happening and what you would like to change are enough to start.
Tell me what's happeningPREFER TO WRITE?
Send me a message.
You do not need a polished brief. Whether the topic is Power BI, Fabric, AI, team training, mentoring, coaching or simply a challenge that needs untangling, leave a few details and we can start from there.
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