Working alongside your Power BI team.
Whether your team needs support to deliver something, or just needs to understand how Power BI thinks, I help them sort out what the numbers should mean, how to model them and how to check the result.
If you're responsible, but not the one building it, you've got me to talk things through with too.
What we can work on
Whether you have a report to deliver, or a system you've inherited and need to get to grips with, we'll start with that work and make room for the learning it needs.
Build and change your reporting
Your team has something to deliver. We work through the decisions behind it, from what a number needs to mean to how the model should calculate it. Your people do the work with my help, so they understand the choices and can change them later.
When a result looks wrong, we follow it back through the model. Finding the cause is useful in its own right; understanding how we found it helps the team deal with the next one.
Learn the why behind the how
If an idea is missing or misunderstood, I teach it through a practical example. That might need a focused explanation while we're working, or a workshop with time to practise afterwards.
If you're arranging training, we agree what people need to be able to do with it. For example, a team learning row-level security could apply it to a report and check that each audience sees the right data. That gives the learning a purpose and you a way to judge the result.
Understand a system you inherited
A working system and a set of handover documents don't always give a team enough understanding to look after it. We trace how the reporting gets from source data to the numbers people use, then practise making and checking changes.
This can happen alongside an external build or after handover.
During handover at an international law firm, a year-to-date number looked wrong. With me alongside, the team followed it through the new Fabric system to a stored procedure that was dropping the right rows. They went back to the consultancy with the likely cause already in hand.
Working through it together
It doesn't matter if it's skills or reports that we're building, we'll always be focussed on what's actually in front of the team through regular sessions direct with me. You bring the part you're stuck on, and together we take time to try things, check what happens and talk through the reasoning.
We can work in your own systems where your data rules allow it, or use examples that let us explore the same problem. Access to live data isn't a prerequisite.
We leave time between sessions for people to apply what we've worked through. An example can make sense while we're looking at it together, then the real data turns out to have a complication. We can pick that up when we next meet.
Somewhere to bring the next question
Regular time for questions can sit alongside that work, with email support between calls. We agree how much time to set aside and review it as the team needs less help.
The contact-centre case study shows how this helped a lead build and maintain her own reporting.
Support for the person leading it
No one person has to understand the full stack to every level of detail.
If you're being asked to sign off an architecture proposal, I'll help you work out what it would mean for the people who have to run it. And I'll say so if I think a new model won't fix the problem, or a clever addition will leave the team with more to maintain than it's worth.
We can also look at what a new hire needs to know, or whether the team is ready to take over a system. I can help you work out what you need to understand personally, what knowledge the team should hold, and where too much depends on one person.
A regular conversation of your own can sit alongside the team's sessions or be arranged separately. It gives you room to think about the direction of the work as well as the next thing to deliver.
AI in the work
If your team is trying Copilot or coding agents, we can open up a piece of the work and go through it together. A measure can run without an error and still answer the wrong question. That's the bit I want the team to be able to spot.
We work out which bits to hand over, what information the tool can access, and how people will check what comes back. That means reading the calculation, understanding what the number is meant to represent, and knowing what to try when the two don't agree.
Every piece of work is a stack of decisions. Hand a problem to AI without naming those decisions, and it makes them for you - and a tool can't take responsibility for a decision.
I explore what this means for the people responsible in We're all middle management now, an essay about delegation, judgement and Power BI.
Start with a conversation
The first step is a free 60-minute call. Tell me about the reporting, the team and what you're trying to do. We can work out where help would be useful and whether it makes sense to work together.
That conversation also tells us whether we need to spend more time understanding the work before agreeing an engagement. If we do, we can scope Discovery around what we need to find out.
Discovery, shaped around the question
Discovery is £1,950 excluding VAT. We use it to work out what needs doing before you commit to a larger engagement. The first call helps us agree which questions it needs to answer and what you'll take away.
Examples of useful takeaways are:
- An initial set of reporting requirements, based on the questions people need the reporting to answer.
- A roadmap for the reporting work, or for the skills the team will need to deliver and maintain it.
- An assessment of whether the ambition fits the team and the time available.
We agree the outputs before you book, so you can put the scope and price to whoever needs to approve the work. You keep what we produce. If that gives you enough to carry on internally, we can stop there. If it leads to a bigger piece of work with me, the Discovery fee comes off that quote.
What it costs
There are two ways we can work, and they're priced differently.
A piece of work is a block of sessions over a set period: eight weekly sessions to get a model built and understood, for example. We agree the sessions and what they need to produce, and I give you one fixed quote for the lot, including preparation, materials and support between sessions. If you've done Discovery, its fee comes off any block of £5,000 or more.
Ongoing support is booked a month at a time, for a team that wants me around while the work carries on. For substantial ongoing work with a team, £3,000 to £6,000 a month excluding VAT is a guide. Lighter support is available below that range and quoted separately, including fewer sessions or a regular second opinion.
Either way, we choose the mix of work with the team and conversations with you according to what will help. As the team becomes more capable, we can reduce the time and cost together, and a monthly arrangement can stop when it stops being useful.
Bring the reporting question you're working on. We'll spend an hour thinking through a useful starting point; the call is free.
Book an hourPrefer to write? Email me