In this chapter, we've walked through the primary elements and considerations in planning a Power BI project. A standard and detailed planing process inclusive of the self-service capabilities needed or expected, project roles and responsibilities, and the design of the dataset can significantly reduce the time and cost to develop and maintain the solution. With a sound foundation of business requirements and technical analysis, a business intelligence team can confidently move forward into a development stage.

In the next chapter, the two data sources identified in this chapter (SQL Server and Excel) will be accessed to begin development of an import mode dataset. Source data will be retrieved via Power BI's M language queries to retrieve the set of required fact and dimension tables. Additionally, several data transformations and query techniques will be applied to enhance the analytical value of the data and the usability of the dataset.