Larger organizations with experience of deploying and managing Power BI often utilize a mix of deployment modes depending on the needs of the project and available resources. For example, a Corporate BI solution with a set of standard IT developed reports and dashboards distributed via a Power BI app may be extended by assigning Power BI Pro licenses to certain business users who have experience or training in Power BI report design. These users could then leverage the existing data model and business definitions maintained by IT to create new reports and dashboards and distribute this content in a separate Power BI app to distinguish ownership. 

Another common scenario is a proof-of-concept (POC) or small-scale self-service solution developed by a business user or a team to be transitioned to a formal, IT-owned, and managed solution. Power BI Desktop's rich graphical interfaces at each layer of the application (query editor, data model, and report canvas) make it possible and often easy for users to create useful models and reports with minimal experience and little to no code. It's much more difficult, of course, to deliver consistent insights across business functions (that is, finance, sales, and marketing) and at scale in a secure, governed environment. The IT organization can enhance the quality and analytical value of these assets as well as provide robust governance and administrative controls to ensure that the right data is being accessed by the right people.

The following list of fundamental questions will help guide a deployment mode decision:

1. Who will own the data model?
   • Experienced dataset designers and other IT professionals are usually required to support complex data transformations, analytical data modeling, large data sizes, and security rules, such as RLS roles, as described in Chapter 4, Developing DAX Measures and Security Roles
   • If the required data model is relatively small and simple, or if the requirements are unclear, the business team may be best positioned to create at least the initial iterations of the model
   • The data model could be created with Analysis Services or Power BI Desktop
2. Who will own the reports and dashboards?
   • Experienced Power BI report developers with an understanding of corporate standards and data visualization best practices can deliver a consistent user experience
   • Business users can be trained on report design and development practices and are well-positioned to manage the visualization layer, given their knowledge of business needs and questions
3. How will the Power BI content be managed and distributed?
   • A staged deployment across development, test, and production environments, as described in Chapter 8, Managing Application Workspaces and Content, helps to ensure that quality, validated content is published. This approach is generally exclusive to Corporate BI projects.
   • Sufficient Power BI Premium capacity is required to support distribution to Power BI Free users and either large datasets or demanding query workloads.
   • Self-Service BI content can be assigned to Premium Capacity, but organizations may wish to limit the scale or scope of these projects to ensure that provisioned capacity is being used efficiently.