PBI Skills Matrix in Fabric – Ep. 340

Mike and Tommy break down how the Power BI Skills Matrix concept translates to the Fabric era and why skills clarity matters when teams ramp up. They also cover the July 2024 updates for Fabric and Power BI, plus a practical beat-from-the-street on PBIP, GitHub, and publishing.

News & Announcements

• Microsoft Fabric July 2024 Update | Microsoft Fabric Blog | Microsoft Fabric — Welcome to the July 2024 update. Here are a few, select highlights of the many we have for Fabric. Creating and managing Git branches & connected workspaces with Git integration just got with the latest…

• Power BI July 2024 Feature Summary | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI — Welcome to the July 2024 update. Here are a few, select highlights of the many we have for Power BI. Customize your reference layers in Azure Maps visual, DAX query view is available in live connect and an update to…

• PowerBI.tips Podcast — Subscribe and listen to the Explicit Measures podcast episodes and related content.

• Power BI Theme Generator — Create and download Power BI report themes using the PowerBI.tips theme generator.

Main Discussion

The main conversation focuses on how teams can use a skills matrix to make expectations explicit (what “good” looks like) and to create a shared path for learning and delivery — especially now that Fabric expands the landscape beyond just report-building. Mike and Tommy talk through what made the original matrix useful, where it needs to evolve, and how to keep it practical for real consulting and internal enablement.

Beat from the Street

The crew shares a practical workflow discussion around PBIP/PBIR, source control in GitHub, and what it means to “load” content into Git and then publish to the Power BI service. The takeaway: the tooling is moving fast, but teams need a clear, repeatable pattern that matches how they actually ship work.

Looking Forward

As Fabric matures, the winning teams won’t just learn new features — they’ll standardize the skills and workflows that turn those features into repeatable outcomes. A simple, shared skills matrix can be a surprisingly powerful forcing function.

Episode Transcript

0:30 good morning and welcome back back to the explicit measures podcast with Tommy Seth and Mike good morning everyone and welcome welcome back good morning gentlemen how are you today it looks like your sound your voice is Sound a morning the a little bit more with it today yes was it positive it is our main topic for today will be talking around the powerbi skills Matrix produced on parb at tips back in 2021 and now that we have fabric we

1:00 2021 and now that we have fabric we probably should revisit that a little bit take another look at this what other skills do we see happening or occurring and are there would you add things to it I guess would be maybe the the context here as well I I think I’ve since 2021 I think I’ve got a lot more ideas around how to Enterprise deploy and roll things out so I I for sure I’ve got some additional roles or people that I would like to add to that role and that skills Matrix as well all right that being said let’s jump right on in

1:30 that being said let’s jump right on in let’s go to some news Tommy we’ve got two major blogs coming out today it’s interesting that they’re still running like two blogs in parallel here there’s there’s the powerbi blog has just recently announced the July 2022 2024 feature update and then we also get the fabric July update anything else that anything here that stood out to you yeah so to your point everything in the power byi blog everything is in the fabric blog yeah it’s to copy copy paste

2:01 fabric blog yeah it’s to copy copy paste yes I think it’s really the fabric that’s stealing the stealing the month in terms of some major updates but let’s give CR love to our our powerbi because of course it’s PowerPoint is one of the big updates here new exporting to PowerPoint dialogue in the service a few updates to modeling in terms of the Dax query view can utilize live connect which is awesome which I really like honestly I of the things that have been added to desktop recently this was a

2:31 added to desktop recently this was a pretty major ad I feel like in recent times being able to see tables and run dexs that changes a lot of how I interact with a model nowadays and I really like this they just added the new button I think you’re going to get there Tommy there’s a new button where you can well a couple things you can script out a measure and all of its dependencies into the Dax query view so you right click on a measure and say show me the definition of this measure and any any

3:01 definition of this measure and any any dependent measure that this thing relies on so you may have some of sales that may be used in some division and maybe you have some other you maybe you have some other calculation where you’re filtering know calculation where you’re filtering things or whatever the thing may be it lists them all out on desktop yeah you can make edits to them you can run queries against them and then you can update all of them at once so if you want to edit three four measures that are in a chain of dependencies you can do that I think this is really a feature it’s Tabler editor light really what so

3:34 it’s Tabler editor light really what so it’s funny that you mentioned that I I’m not sure not sure where I think this is very much has been needed for Dax in general and I actually saw a funny little text not text message a Twitter post from or X post from Marco Russo he said I had recently gone on and had to use MDX for a project and I I quickly realized tabular about editing and deex is way easier than doing MDX so I thought oh good good to know even though Dax is hard MDX is

4:06 know even though Dax is hard MDX is worst so gosh there’s there’s other worse patterns you could follow that are out there anyways I I really like this I think you’re right this is tabal editor light I’m very I like this feature a lot the biggest updates I think for powerbi are oddly enough not even in the powerbi powerbi blog I don’t know if you caught it so that of course like every every month but especially this month there’s some major updates in the fabric blog of course but one thing I think that kind

4:36 course but one thing I think that kind course but one thing I think that I don’t know why it wasn’t including of I don’t know why it wasn’t including powerbi is passionated reports an API parameters yes like a big thing okay have you have you tried to build parameters in patching reports in the report the oh yeah the report builder in the report Builder program that you download I I still what language is that it’s Dax I no it’s not Dax it has its own separate documentation on Microsoft I

5:08 separate documentation on Microsoft I don’t like it it’s it’s all part of the old page and age experience yeah SSRS create create old parameters you’re usually deriving them from see separate queries right only people with lots of gray hair will know how to do this I don’t know how to do this anyways the desktop the the application the RDL build Builder on desktop is awesome it does a ton of things it’s super cool I don’t need all that I just need a table of data with a handful of parameters I don’t even need it looks like there’s going to be a when

5:39 looks like there’s going to be a when you go to the the service side of things it looks like you’re going to be able to add images and add a text box at the top and like make tables and like it’s going to you can make a header you can make a footer it feels like a lot of the simple features that you need to add have been added to the service I’m very pleased about this one also very excited about that as well I think that’s really big win it it’ll be interesting to see how many of those so all all of these were properties on a properties tab pane right that you could just scroll through

6:09 right that you could just scroll through endlessly and like configure and you still can but that was the old page and a experience like or SSRS like it’ll be interesting to see which ones of those they deem important enough to pull out pull out into this right where it’s like a more top level button yes that’s easy to click and add and and do things with as opposed to just leaving it excuse me buried on the on the in the panel yeah I

6:39 buried on the on the in the panel yeah I don’t know I I would imagine the end game here I don’t know how fast the team’s going to be able to move with this because I don’t know how many people work on the pagein report experience but I would imagine their vision would be do everything in the service so that you don’t even need to download page report builder for your computer anymore I think I think that would be if I had a vision from the Microsoft Microsoft team and this is what I said a long time ago I said look look how big the program is for pading report Builder it’s a couple megabytes in size you download

7:09 couple megabytes in size you download desktop now desktop’s like almost a half a gig in size it’s huge so I’m thinking of all the programs and all the things you can replace ping report Builder experience that seems like a very lightweight experience to replace because it’s a much smaller program there’s much less to it it’s it’s kind there’s much less to it it’s it’s known how to build everything so of known how to build everything so there’s not you’re not in innovating new icons buttons features interaction it’s not an interactive page report it’s just known so I I really hope they can complete that work and

7:40 can complete that work and basically deprecate or get rid of the desktop application for page reports because now all our Mac users can make pagein reports which is what we’ve always wanted did you just say like it’s just known how to do all that no no like they there’s no there’s no Innovative features on the page report we’re not building like new visuals we’re not building new features of page reports what by it’s known is this thing’s how long’s been page reports been around long time like 20 30 years plus I don’t know so at

8:13 20 30 years plus I don’t know so at least so I feel like after all that time you should know how the product should work so people like it so if you’ve got all the features in it right now just make parody with what you have in in the desktop application to what’s in the service well it’s interesting say that right because if if I look at SSRS right the pated report experience sure it’s it’s a developer focused experience it is 100% what what that means is like

8:50 your you you not studying or not not having a bunch of experience with paginated yep is is probably just because you haven’t spent time like engaging in in that report type 100% this is exactly what I’m saying I don’t know a lot about it I I think what’s interesting about that is we we discuss a lot about the differences between roles and people engaged and we’re like we’re really excited and talking about the developer experience and developer tools and developer things with carbi

9:20 tools and developer things with carbi all the time yep that there there is this mix of not just personas people using these tools which is really going to be interesting with this conversation of like where you going want to go with this Matrix Tommy but outside of stealing all my ideas yeah you’re gonna be the bearer of the the difference what is the balance right like you’re mik from a from a outside perspective not having

9:51 from a outside perspective not having spent a bunch of time with page United you’d like that more UI experience where it like leads you lets you do the things easily and quickly for the onetime pageant Ed report you’re going to build right versus maybe the other experience where well I could create a template and I could create all these properties that I can configure and

10:13 properties that I can configure and deploy and like that’s a wild difference and it it is interesting you be like how do you how do you create the tool tool sets or the UI presentation to fit both those needs now because you can’t like what I’m saying is maybe you can’t be as critical iCal because or can you right because like how do you how do you develop a user experience that is being used by completely or wildly different personas that’s a great question yeah

10:43 personas that’s a great question yeah you add it do statement right I but you’re right you’re right there Seth it’s even in what we’ve done in the theme generator we tried to build it so it’s very technical right you can do a lot of very technical things but also it’s very easy and approachable as well so we want to make it easy for you to click buttons add features see visuals update in real time so we want to be very simple approachable for anyone but then to your point Seth we also want it to be super

11:13 point Seth we also want it to be super technical so we want we want the ability to have how do you say that we want the ability to let you go into the code see see all the like it’s there’s a there is a technical side to all this tool we want to be able to expose that but at the same time the big difference and what’s always been my slight frustration with Pion reports is the code that you’re providing is the same code that you’d be doing anyways in a theme file

11:44 you’d be doing anyways in a theme file it’s somewhat familiar in terms of what you’re looking at everything in page native reports is starting from scratch completely scratch for who for the for the straight business user getting into the environment yeah well it’s the it’s whatever the coding language and the functions are I are you already got to know Dax I got mean you already got to know Dax I got to know power query I got to know SQL and now I have to learn this new way Syntax for for page reports

12:15 Syntax for for page reports which I feel like but you don’t have to that’s the point this this is the part of the genius that Microsoft does with like power query here’s a UI drag and drop a lot of the things 90% of what you need is at the surface level it’s already there under the hood the whole page report has a is a very well-known xmla documented thing that you can use and create code to generate the reports right it’s a it’s a known standard yeah so what I don’t know I think to your point Seth is in the web browser how

12:45 point Seth is in the web browser how deep are we going to be allowed to go to get to that deeply technical side right I have a table will I be able to click each cell and format it bold it not bold it add conditional formatting for what I need and all the little features of styling that I would want I hope we get there but this is this is also what I would say Microsoft is doing and this isn’t a very developer Centric thing but you have vs code you can download to your desktop but I can go to code dodev or dev. code and use vs code in the

13:17 or dev. code and use vs code in the browser and this the experience to me the user whether I’m in the browser or on the desktop it’s feeling extremely similar these days and so I what I think I’m getting at here is it should not really matter if I’m in a a browser window or I’m on a downloadable desktop application they should both have the same depth and capabilities that I would want and I really hope they don’t do with pagey reports what they did with desktop where they made a whole bunch of like custom things like they there’s a whole bunch of visuals that are made by

13:47 whole bunch of visuals that are made by Microsoft their custom way their way of doing them I really hope that they expose the code potentially or an editor or here’s the UI here’s a gooey that lets you do 80 90% of all the things but if you really want to tweak something or dial it in or change it or adjust it here’s the code button here’s the code behind the scenes so for you technical users you can go in and just write very detailed code to make the page reports I hope that’s where they’re going I don’t know if there’s a lot of value in that

14:17 know if there’s a lot of value in that because Microsoft has to build what people want to buy essentially if there’s no one using that feature like why would you have that feature exist other than to say you can do it and everyone now is happy I don’t know maybe I went on the random a random tangent there I think that’s I think that’s a topic for another day as that comes out I do want to mention one of the major updates one of the greatest updates to fabric is now in preview

14:51 updates to fabric is now in preview GitHub is available for Source control the flyers in we again all these sound effects that we have stored up here in the background we’ll we’ll add those for you there’s that little what’s that little meme sound the little yay yeah yeah so this is this is significant to me because I think a lot of more often than not users already have a good handle on handle on GitHub and devops while very similar

15:22 GitHub and devops while very similar I think this is going to open up both the open source part of this from the community point of view but but also how many organizations really run with GitHub internally and what they do and also all the features that GitHub has available so I’m really excited about this because it’s seamless with vs code in terms of extensions for it I did go down that path of trying to find Azure devop extensions surprisingly not a ton Microsoft no there’s not so yeah there’s a couple things

15:54 there’s a couple things here so I would I maybe want to jump in let me me hang that one so let’s go through the rest of the blog if there’s any other things that stood out to us because I do want that is my you because I do want that is my my other feature here that we’re know my other feature here that we’re talking about today I want I do want to visit this is my beat from a street I did a demo on this this week and it went really well and I really like the feature of it so I’m G I want to take that as my beat from the street when we get the rest of the blog any other things that stood out to us on the blog the only other thing is some capacity pools and environment

16:27 is some capacity pools and environment stuff for data science I like that I’ve been playing with that you can push your notebooks to a different version or start designing different versions of your nodes you’re using I wish there was a little bit more way of so if you think about your capacity your your compute units that you have inside your fabric environment I want a little bit of of a I think this is what you’re doing with these when you use capacity tools for spark you can specify how big you want spark to become and on some instances

16:59 spark to become and on some instances especially when we’re talking fabric I’m paying a dedicated amount of compute units right if I’m paying for an f64 I get 64 compute units per second for an entire month so I think it roughly comes out to like if if Aon f64 isn’t I think it’s like 50 million or something like that 50 million compute units I’m not sure 7 million I can’t remember the number anyway some big number what I want to be able to do is I want to be able to say look my fabric capacities or any The Notebook capacities in fabric

17:31 any The Notebook capacities in fabric are always limited to this threshold and what I’m finding right now is there’s not a lot of way of throttling different workloads by how much capacity I’m expecting it to use for example if I’m running a series of notebooks I would rather have some of those notebooks run longer as opposed to finishing sooner so that way I don’t accidentally overrun or turn push my capacity into smoothing and I need them to run a bit more strategic so I’m not sure if we’re going to get there yet but I really I’m liking this

18:02 there yet but I really I’m liking this new configuration you can add your own libraries you can preset preset things you can you can grab the preview version of spark I think it were spark 2. 3. 2 3. 1 I don’t remember what it was but there’s a new version that’s in preview right now which you can go get early you can make these spark definitions so I really like that the the only last thing I want to mention because again there’s always a ton of these fabric ones I actually had a conversation with someone on the Microsoft team about this a few months ago but the thing that really

18:32 months ago but the thing that really runs notebooks and fabric is the MS spark utilities package or or function it’s really what allows you to seamlessly connect to your data has all the functions that you would need to do the only problem is if you wanted to utilize that and push things in vs code you can’t because Ms spark is only in the fabric in a sense environment or when you’re interface so there’s a new mspark new

19:02 mspark new API I’m I’m definitely going to be diving into this where you can get at least right now just information about the live the live session so hopefully this is the first step to actually that spark utilities becoming something that you can use outside of the fabric environment I I’m G to point out a couple other things here that I I want to just quickly note on I like that update Tommy I think it’s a good one you can now edit your Json code for

19:32 you can now edit your Json code for data pipelines so you have a data pipeline you need to make a quick edit my developers who work on pipelines very frequently tell me Michael just go in and stop trying to click on the activity just go into the code and edit the code we could not do that before you want to rename something you want to change a quick connection string you want to see all the parameters once you get into Data flows a bit deeper you can see everything it’s easier in code just to skip to the section you want and look at it well now you can edit that code in the pipeline which is huge I think that’s a major win and again

20:03 think that’s a major win and again this is this is what I was talking about earlier Tommy about the pading reports yeah it was here’s the goey here’s the UI that’s all clean and pretty oh by the way we’re actually generating code behind the scenes and if you want to see it here’s the edit button like to me that makes sense that’s that’s what we should be doing we should be exposing all the simple things first and then here’s the under the hood button to go down and edit stuff so I like that

20:27 go down and edit stuff so I like that feature the other thing I would say on the note here as well I don’t know if do you follow who’s MIM do you follow MIM at all on Twitter or X yeah I MIM has been raving about the new Lakehouse schemas now in public preview so you can create schemas now inside your lake housee so you could think of this as like a folder that then collects a bunch of tables but it’s all

20:57 collects a bunch of tables but it’s all built inside it’s got three-part naming schema so this is almost Verbatim what I think data bricks is doing or what lak houses do in general you have the name of the lake house as the first part then you have the schema that it holds itself under and so by by default all the lak houses get a dbo schema and then you can make a new schema for like customers Finance marketing and I hope and I haven’t seen it yet but I hope we get to a place where we can manage access to individual schemas in the lake

21:28 access to individual schemas in the lake housee housee so here’s a bunch of tables that exist and to to be honest this fixes one of the problems I build today I make a lake house but I make three of them I make three lake houses one for bronze one for silver and one for gold if I can restrict the schema like the users that can access a schema on a lake house I don’t need to have three different lake houses now I can have one lake house with three schemas this is the schema for bronze here’s the schema for silver and here’s a schema for gold and now you can move those tables

21:59 can move those tables or put them in places that are curated inside the same Lakehouse I think this makes a lot of sense and it mirrors a lot of the other experiences that I’ve been doing inside Lakehouse development elsewhere so MIM you’re right on point I really like this feature I think it’s great I need to play with it a bit more it’s still in preview so I guess it’s going to be a bit dodgy maybe there’s some bugs and some things that are not quite there yet so stay tuned for that but I’m really excited to R Lakehouse schemas

22:29 Lakehouse schemas how excited are you about lak house schemas oh it’s it’s just the most exciting thing oh that’s funny anyways any other notes or thoughts around the recent blog posts should move on okay I was waiting for an answer or response I’ll just let be a little I was just I was just waiting for timeing to say oh and one one one other really cool thing I’m sorry it’s a big deal one other cool thing yes

22:59 thing yes a lot of cool things I am excited to see how many new things are coming out through fabric it is definitely hard to keep up with all of them I would I’ll be honest like I had a hard time when powerbi was going full force and epting itself and now we have all these things in fabric so interesting there let’s move on to our main topic our main topic today is coming directly from our website pb. tips and so we’re going through the skills Matrix maybe I should have Seth Ki it off here give us a a onew Seth what is the skills Matrix why do we care about it and what

23:30 Matrix why do we care about it and what were we talking about changing here for fabric yeah I think well originally it’s probably doing the same thing here right there was a whole series of articles that I I did and one was when you had so many people saying that they were experts in powerbi and what does that mean like or you’re looking for somebody who knows how to do powerbi and what was lacking that I thought this would really be helpful for was how do we assess our own skills

24:02 was how do we assess our own skills within powerbi as well as allow organizations to vet people like hey you’re powerbi what are what areas are you really good in like because bigger powerbi teams have differing needs right sometimes you can specialize in certain areas because I may need a model expert I may need you to performance tune things to the eenth degree because I only got a limited spend and I want to do a lot so I’ll spend it on you instead

24:34 do a lot so I’ll spend it on you instead of of capacity so what this was is a a first in a three-part series of of different things but ultimately it was designed to highlight some Focus areas and then allow individuals to rate themselves across those areas based on the the high level right right so for I have to remember that we’re talking to people on podcasts is as well as not

25:05 people on podcasts is as well as not presenting something so it’s like on the top level headers right connect and transform model visualization admin and architecture and embed in custom visuals and then on the levels right 1 through 10 in each of the cells right of this Matrix you’d have a description of what that individual should know to gain that score and it’s additive so as you go down you would obviously assume they know all the skills prior to that so you can rate yourself or rate

25:35 so you can rate yourself or rate individuals in a how well do powerbi powerbi sense I think this is at a time Seth we we developed this I think we came the initial idea and we spit Bal some ideas back and forth on this one but this was in a time when we were really reviewing or doing a lot of interviews of people so this came in a in a time for us where we needed to hi talent hi talent and I still take some technique from this I learned something from this and I

26:05 this I learned something from this and I use it now when I help companies hire people I do this regularly I regularly am on the technical side of the interview and to be to be very clear this is a service there’s an opportunity for people who know the space to help companies who don’t know the space as well to really get a gauge for like what do people know like what should they be learning and so when I do this it’s some people it sounds like I conflict of interest at times and let me give you some color here right hey we have this this consultant here this consultant’s getting money from us to do

26:35 consultant’s getting money from us to do work and would by the way he’s going to help us hire new people well your initial thought or at least my initial reaction would be is oh this consultant’s going to always say everyone’s insufficient they don’t know what they’re talking about they have no clue what’s going on what I feel like is better to do as a consultant being hired by companies to help them find the talent right it’s helpful for me to go through and say here are the areas that this person is strong in they have a clear understanding in these areas and what I recommend to these clients is here’s areas that I think they’re weak

27:05 here’s areas that I think they’re weak and will need training in these are the types of topics that you build in your environment that this person has not touched they don’t have skills on and would need some education on so it’s not I’m not saying don’t hire them it’s more like here’s an evaluation of the person and and when I do these evaluations it I’m sneaky so if you if if you’re ever getting interviewed by me for those of you who are who are looking for jobs and I potentially show up on the interview board I will ask you five questions at

27:36 board I will ask you five questions at the beginning of the interview and I’ll say rank yourself one to five how good you are in the service in data modeling in visual building in Administration in powerbi embedding because these are the I I ask you initially to say like how confident are you in these areas because what that tells me is if you’re extremely confident in data modeling I’m going to ask you really hard questions in the data modeling area if you are really confident in administration of

28:06 really confident in administration of powerbi I’m going to ask you a lot of technical questions around architectures that work for small medium and and large businesses I’m going to really dig into those areas that you feel confident in because to your point Seth I think there’s an overconfidence of oh I build reports in powerbi desktop therefore I know everything about powerbi and there’s a lot more that goes to this this the tool is becoming incredibly large large and now I have to ask questions around what do in data engineering how do you handle have you played with spark before do what you’re talking

28:36 before do what you’re talking about when you talk about notebooks give me some of your favorite python libraries like if you can’t answer some of these basic questions I’m thinking you don’t have the experience so I will I’ll tell you I I’ve evolved that a little bit I like it and and more so I know you like it cuz it’s good came to begin with so so the evolution is what we identified with with people is especially in an interview you want to

29:06 especially in an interview you want to impress so what typically happens is people will over inflate themselves 100% so so the problem is if you’re using the those questions all in the beginning then then it’s already in that overinflated state and you’re not getting any value from those metrics really really so what I’ve done is rather than I’ve modified that rather than asking all those questions right up front yeah I will I will do it per segment of whatever I’m interviewing for

29:37 segment of whatever I’m interviewing for him because the first one will be overinflated and typically I see interviewers interviewers will know that they overstepped and just walked into a realm that is really uncomfortable because if you’re saying you’re a 10 out of 10 in Dax we’re starting at 10 and if you’re not questions right right so tell me how you manage perspectives using the tabular editor right yeah so yeah so so then

30:07 editor right yeah so yeah so so then like when and typically what I’m trying what I’ll try to do and this is a people thing right yes because I want like as an interviewer you have a limited amount of time to engage and Fe and see a person it’s hard so you have to get as much of an accurate representation just what they know you’re you’re picking up on personality and team and all that while you’re doing it but that’s why usually like the first section is the one I don’t I care least about be but because I want an accurate rating for themselves yes I want to know what

30:37 for themselves yes I want to know what those challenge areas are I don’t want to just assume yes so the second third

30:42 to just assume yes so the second third and fourth are the ones that like after the first one typically people will be like yeah I’m a 10 the second one they’ll be like I’m like a five or six like okay great right like let’s start there right we yeah we calibrate out where we need to be so that I found extremely helpful Mike and maybe you can use that I like that I I I did never really anticipate it so I almost look for

31:15 those I’m going to propose a counter perspective to what you’re doing right so okay I like the idea of using the numbering system before you hit the section that you’re going through and you get that that first number you get potentially is a bit unrealistic based on your questions that you ask him and they realize oh shoot I’m talking to an MVP here he really does know his stuff I better not make up anything moving moving forward so it feels like that first number you it’s like the what do they call it the the dog pancake what

31:46 they call it the the dog pancake what do they call it dog pancake dog heard of this yeah it’s it’s when you make pancakes the first Pancake you make is no good and you just feed it to the dog it’s like it’s it’s the Pan’s not quite hot enough you didn’t have the right mix right and and so it’s it’s it’s a it’s a dog pancake right you you give that one to the dog and then you make the other one so it’s like a throwaway data point you you have it but you can’t trust it thing right the other data points make sense so on one hand you hurt yourself in that that first one because they’re actually changing how they behave for the later

32:16 changing how they behave for the later ones that’s that’s what I’m saying like the first section is one I don’t care about or it’s an easy you not not an easy section but it’s like a technical area that I have less need of okay and and then what what I what I feel like is if you do that so makes sense totally makes sense there but if you ask all of them up front they’re going to overinflate all of the areas but at least they’re thinking about them in the same Limelight like if I if I ask so I can gauge measure one to measure

32:46 so I can gauge measure one to measure two measure three measure four because I haven’t tainted them I haven’t given them feedback yet early in the process to let them know like how good or not good they are regardless like I think this conversation and what the Matrix are trying to do or help help quantify right or or help people understand the concepts of like what it is we’re talking about what are what are all the different areas and help us end up in a better space as an individual or a business sure yeah contrary to PO belief the skills Matrix was not created

33:17 belief the skills Matrix was not created to be a bunch of booby traps even though no no it’s not even know it’s a great way to do so thing really I actually just had a conversation with a client yesterday and we’re utilizing that for on ramping a lot of their team in powerbi because they’re like where do we start there’s a ton of things to do and it’s like okay let’s build some milestones and let’s see if you can get to level three or level two and that’s always so impactful because

33:47 and that’s always so impactful because I’ve said this a ton on the podcast before there’s a ton of other Industries out there that actually have levels of skill that can actually be measured and we don’t so what Seth did make our standard we got to make our standard yeah and that that’s huge because at least it gives you somewhere to go it’s not a blend all but my goodness at least gives you somewhere to aim and we’re utilizing the skills Matrix through their journey and this was just and I thought powerbi was complicated because it had

34:17 powerbi was complicated because it had so many skill languages and and different parts of the brain to use I will agree there and another another thought around this one too so if I had to go back this is a 2021 version of a skills Matrix what would I have change what would I change now looking at it and what would I enhance or add to it I think I would I’ve actually done a couple sessions in our online governance class training. tips around skills Matrix and what skills we see them needing in

34:47 what skills we see them needing in companies I feel like I’m adding a lot more skills around we’re we’re we’re generalizing more of the skill set right there’s Administration I feel like is a is a we have an the skill Matrix today has an Administration column in it today I think there’s another one around data engineering or more you we’re now we’re expanding to pipelines notebooks data flows online so this is where things I think get a little bit weird in some cases because I could

35:18 weird in some cases because I could easily I think push towards the person who’s the data modeler they could do a lot of those skills but there are some techniques that might not be in that data modeler realm that you want to give to an actual data engineer yes then there’s like the report Builder Okay so someone who can build reports what what does that skill set look like what features of desktop do how to use and can you correctly articulate the use of those features and maintain things and then there’s this one called the release manager I’m working

35:49 called the release manager I’m working more and more with companies that have if when you start thinking about Central bi teams teams that have a a central location a Coe and maybe a CO P that that runs a standard set of data elements through the through the the organization I think you really do need someone who’s going to be a little bit of a program manager and someone who’s going to be pushing the team to say complete your work in development I will move it from test to production and while that M that’s just a Persona that’s not a person you don’t need to

36:19 that’s not a person you don’t need to hire one person to only move content through but I think there’s a set of skills that are using more of that continuous integration continuous development pattern on how to automate this stuff and now with Git like we just saw talked about this morning Tommy GitHub is much more technical you’re going to have to write a lot of code you’re going to have to understand how to integrate with Azure devops or GitHub if you want to become more of that larger larger Enterprise team regularly pushing out content so I think the roles are in my

36:50 content so I think the roles are in my mind are changing and expanding I don’t see a lot of organizations asking for skills around data science yet in fabric that doesn’t seem to be a thing I I’m not hearing that on the street this point it’s it’s more about we need data Engineers we need data modelers we need report Builders that’s those are the main skill sets that I think organizations are clamoring for and I also realize not every organization needs the same skill set so we say powerbi we say fabric but there are

37:21 powerbi we say fabric but there are organizations that need a much heavier emphasis on notebooks and Spark and others need a lot more on modeling and Report building and so there are there’s potentially existing teams that are going to own other portions of this Tech stack it’s getting so blurry nowadays it’s like it’s really interesting to see how this is changing before I say anything else Seth when you were creating the skills Matrix were you thinking that in the realm of a

37:51 were you thinking that in the realm of a certain Persona or multi or multiple personas were you thinking of one type of person or were you trying to touch on a bunch of different people’s roles gez Tommy it’s 2024 and that was written in 2021 so let me go rip up my not there’s Point generalized yeah okay I think when we did this there was no fabric at the time there was no concept like the idea was just in the context of powerbi just powerbi pick picking points of interest

38:22 powerbi pick picking points of interest of like okay the the more like when you get into level 10 it’s it’s talking about have you read all of Marco’s B Marco Russo’s documentation yeah that that thing so it’s it’s more it’s it’s not hey you’re a developer in a developer world coming from page andate hey you’re a business user like looking at this it’s just a a generalized view of the powerbi ecosystem okay because I been

38:52 powerbi ecosystem okay because I been actually working on content for training around Fabric and the biggest part is which rabbit whole do you go down because again each of these are really their own career and they have been their own career and they absolutely could be even like even in the existing Matrix right and that that was my point is you could because a lot of other parts of this are people asking like well what should I study what should I look at like what what part of powerbi should get I get really good at and we were addressing questions all the time like well it’s always really good

39:22 like well it’s always really good to know SQL because that’s a lot of the source systems any anything you’re going to interact with and play like you have to know some power quy Dax is going to be your your king like if you’re if Dax and modeling like you’re going to have a lot better time and you could focus you could hyperfocus on modeling and Dax and be a high level professional like like make a career out of it like Marco and Alberto right and they’re highly sought-after individuals who know how to performance tune modeling or models as opposed to

39:53 tune modeling or models as opposed to just create them right and create a Dax measure and not understand that you just it like it like like the Nuance of when you’re implementing new Dax code what it’s doing to the tabular model as opposed to just getting it to run right and most folks are in the just get it to get it to run aspect and so it’s like you can go way down those things if you like to H hyperfocus on a subject or you could incrementally just go across the board

40:23 incrementally just go across the board right like you can be a jack of all right all trades not master of none kind right all trades not master of none thing of thing MH MH so as I was going through and again the core Crux of thinking about the skills Matrix today I I think rather than trying to figure the entire Matrix out on what it would look like I think the big question for a lot of people and probably for myself too is are we creating one skills Matrix for fabric is this going to be under one umbrella

40:53 this going to be under one umbrella because I think this is where we get

40:55 because I think this is where we get into really I know there’s I can work in all the aspects of fabric but one should I because to your point I may be good at notebooks but I can probably more easily break something because I’ve never done that for a career it was very easy with powerbi to say I can do I’m G to do it all I’m going to build models I’m going to do the dacks I’m going to do the visuals I can even do some admin to and that was one person the the c the overlapping

41:25 one person the the c the overlapping of skills while they were e unique to each other wasn’t terribly foreign but I don’t know if that’s the case with fabric I I’m right now I’m leaning where there are going to be multiple skills Matrix with fabric and I don’t know if it would actually be even helpful to have a general one because what would that really solve well it solved the questions of where your brain is stuck right now like how do you how do you how do you

41:55 you conceptualize fabric right so like the value of compiling all that together and a matrix is just a way in which you can conceptualize oh okay like these things fit in in these buckets right like I that makes sense to me or it doesn’t and it doesn’t align so on a high level could we could you put fabric into a matrix yeah absolutely you could could you could you take any one of the columns I had from the original Matrix and blow it out into its own Matrix of

42:26 and blow it out into its own Matrix of of course you could right like every one of those could be do this specific function do what it does do what happens when you implement it do like that rabbit hole goes deep man yeah right and I think that’s why I like to Center on like these these larger principles of what you need to get done in your business right this is where I think this makes more sense there’s a data modeling Persona that maybe incorporates connect transform modeling data and maybe even some lightweight pipeline

42:56 maybe even some lightweight pipeline work maybe some notebook work that might make sense for that data modeler to be able to shape and move data around I think there’s a report Builder experience because the person who model I find the people that can model data really well don’t necessarily always make the best looking reports because they focus on the technical side of getting the data to work correctly I don’t think those are you can find people that do both but you don’t need it doesn’t need to be an exclusive like skill set that’s all together so I think that’s another Persona I think

43:26 that’s another Persona I think Administration and architecture of the system that’s another skill because the number of people who come in and don’t understand data security labels and workspace design and thin models and a a a data a semantic model right splitting your workspaces between models and thin reports these are strategies that companies use to make theirselves become more efficient and easier to manage content and as your team grows in size from small to large you need to employ more of these techniques to divide the

43:56 more of these techniques to divide the work across the team if you have everything living in a model and report all in one element that is it’s not efficient to work that way as a team you can’t have only one person only working on the model and report all the time and especially if we’re building a we’re we’re investing into power. com I feel like that’s that’s another a place where we want one model many reports that’s the goal here right building reusable content that’s the expectation so depending on where your what your

44:26 so depending on where your what your organization wants do and where your existing team sits companies have entire bi Dev teams where there’s a corporate structure that says look we will provide data to you in a lake from data bricks great now we have to decide who where does the ownership line divide and that’s the part I think that’s much more challenging to get your head around and I’m I’m really working on this idea or concept that between apps all the way down to the tables there’s so many

44:57 down to the tables there’s so many layers of the onion that you can give control to other teams to build stuff and fabric makes this incredibly easy to then distribute and share content across teams now we don’t have to start operating in single silos now it’s a matter of does the team I’m giving access to my shortcuts in a Lakehouse do they have the skills to even utilize what we can give them now the technology I think is faster has evolved faster than potential skills of other teams so

45:27 than potential skills of other teams so I need to your point Tommy I need a skills Matrix to at least come in and sayl tell me what what what of the space do you have information about and then we can then make the Assumption or or the analysis to say here’s the gaps we should work on let me let me work through you work with you on the The Lakehouse the shortcuts let’s talk about the SQL server list the the SQL Server SQL analytics endpoint how do you use that where do you use notebooks let’s do some B basic skills there okay

45:58 let’s do some B basic skills there okay run away go build some stuff let’s see what you come up with and maybe then we can have a better conversation on what our organization looks like but this is different for every org and if you were to say if I were to have a hot take today I think right now I think the the we’ll see how you’re feeling I think creating a general fabric Matrix skills Matrix would does more harm than good if you were to say we’re going to have a General fabric Matrix that generally covers every part

46:30 Matrix that generally covers every part of the product and here’s why I’m actually going to actually back this one up rather than just trying to light a fire we all know that some the areas that we’re talking about data engineering and analytics they’re critical to the business and I may have a general idea how it works I may be able to create one but do I know what to H happens in a fire do do I know how to accidentally delete everything so just because I’m aware of some features and

47:00 because I’m aware of some features and some of the skills does not make me in any way able to own and run with it especially if I’m going to claim this as my career there’s maybe a knowledge Matrix that would be more appropriate but I I think it does more harm than good because it just gets people the assumption that they know these products when again there are people who intimately do this day in Day Out with data engineering Mike that so go I’ve done a few notebooks I know

47:31 go I’ve done a few notebooks I know Medallion right but also the complications can go into it so I would stay away from creating a general fabric skills Matrix that is the hot [Music] [Music] take so let me let me quantify this if you if you go take I’ll just give it an analogy of what I think is happening other places right if you go into statistics there is a number of really smart people at the top of the statistics platform building things called Black Belt if you want to become

48:01 called Black Belt if you want to become someone who deals with Statistics and is recommending things for companies you likely are going through some black belt training you get certified in it and it’s a rigorous class you study it you get take tests on it they make sure you test your knowledge ultimately I think we need we’re going to be getting to that place where organizations are going to require right so the organization doesn’t know the skills of these people and what they need to know organization will continually go to a third party a body a some other organ ganization and I’m trying to build some of that with training. tips these are the standards

48:31 training. tips these are the standards these are the informations that you need to know to be able to be capable in these areas so the whole goal of our YouTube channel the whole goal of our website has all been around educating people with experts who know things who have gotten burned by here’s the fire drill here’s how things are happening so right if I look at it from the black belt standpoint one the powerbi world the fabric world does not have have standards or measurements that allow us to say we’re able to gate people by

49:01 to say we’re able to gate people by skills based on a standard measure where should that come from that should technically come from a collection of individuals that are leaders in the community or a a nonprofit that’s developing what that looks like it’s like the Marco rusus of the world the Daniel oares of tabular editors the you Daniel oares of tabular editors the the Mims of the world these know the Mims of the world these individuals are experts in each of their own areas and they’re going to know the most the Phil C marks of the world they need to come together and say these are

49:31 need to come together and say these are the things that we recommend for best capabilities in these spaces and I think it while that while that doesn’t exist it doesn’t make me want to shy away from making skills Matrix of what I’ve experienced and what I find works well for organization so I think there is regardless I think you need to have some North Star some measurement some experience based things and if you’re worried about does this person know how to handle this in a fire that’s part of the skills

50:02 in a fire that’s part of the skills Matrix that’s part of your Skilling how do you debug XYZ things when this thing starts failing what do you do how do you get to the answer that’s part of the skills Matrix so I think that is a skill that users would need to know in that area so I’m going to disagree with you I’m going to say it’s not dangerous I’m going to say it is important that you do it I think what is dangerous though is where do you get your information from where is the standard being built from and I think

50:33 standard being built from and I think that is that is that is what what I’m trying to point on yes you can generalize a lot of this information yeah but who is your expert where does that live from and I think a lot of this comes from the Microsoft cat team you’re going to listen to Matthew roach on how you deploy your organization because he’s been doing this for 20 years we’ve been learning from him and we’ve been doing powerbi since it came out 2015 so nine years ago so like for from us from our standpoint like we are still learning from experts that Microsoft has

51:04 learning from experts that Microsoft has been doing but you always look up to the people who’ve been doing it longer than you have because they likely have more

51:08 you have because they likely have more experience in those areas yeah hard disagree you gave you you lobbed one to me on Tuesday where I agreed you agreed with you and I because you were under the weather you didn’t quite have iage a delusional moment but yeah I hard hard disagree like I said before like the skill a matrix yes is nothing other than conceptualizing some like Concepts concretely and being able to quantify them and if I can’t do that

51:39 quantify them and if I can’t do that like you saying that makes me want to just go build this right now publish something because I can but Jack think the important I think the important go ahead I was say Jack in the comments is is jumping on your point right there think I Seth there’s room for both generalists and the Specialists that’s really good and I think I think one of the there two challenges that Tommy you brought up earlier and are still relevant one is how like Fabric

52:11 still relevant one is how like Fabric and how do how do all how does all of the roles fit into that like how do how do people navigate this space Etc and I I I think my initial concerns around this like shifted back into like guys like nothing has changed like all it is is we’re just in a shared ecosystem yes the same teams are doing the same stuff it’s just a matter of permissions correct and if anything B devs in the

52:41 correct and if anything B devs in the original skills Matrix still applies to powerbi devs for the most part yeah does that mean they don’t see more in an ecosystem that now brings in essentially all of the data things that they were still in some degree some way shape or form connecting to right no it’s all in the same place which is fantastic because now they can see all the lineage and see how the ETL works if they need to or whatever the case may be that doesn’t change their role in the organization right and I think just

53:13 organization right and I think just because it came together as rapidly as it did I think we and many people are under the misconception like oh my God what does this do to everybody’s like lives and like our teams and like it doesn’t do anything guys it just makes our lives better and easier because we can work within the same spaces and the data engineer that is can look at the model that you built when you were doing a quick pocc for the the business can Now understand has access to that model can look at the data

53:44 to that model can look at the data sources and see how he needs to orchestrate and build his new data Pipeline and then he’s just going to say hey we’re going to reconnect to here and boom there you go all within the same workspace right so amazing I I think I think from a from a skills Matrix perspective I think you’re bringing in like where like 2021 to now I think it’s a little bit more Nuance because the audience is much bigger you now brought in a whole bunch of data data Centric

54:15 in a whole bunch of data data Centric people that may or may not be interested or may or may not be keyed into the business side of things into this ecosystem because it’s it’s engineering it’s architecture it’s data science like these are all of the things that were happening previously just in separate tooling and now now these teams and these people and these roles are all together so I think that that is what makes a generalized skills Matrix even more important for fabric because the same way you’ve misconstrued things and

54:46 same way you’ve misconstrued things and we did collectively by mashing them all together just because all these things are together doesn’t mean that all of these people in these skills got thrown away or have to cross train or learn or teams are going to change Etc that’s not the case I don’t think I think it is very structured it it can be you just we just need to lean into okay is the ecosystem set up in such a way that these teams can be easily plugged in to the places that they need to Via permissions to share the things that

55:16 permissions to share the things that they would want to across that ecosystem because the data Engineers themselves are likely going to be part of the Enterprise right where there is data systems that are then shared with other individuals and teams and and whatnot and that would be like how you start to PR PR proliferate that data throughout the organization into the areas that it needs to be but you’re much more tightly coupled with the subject matter experts I would agree that’s fair and

55:48 experts I would agree that’s fair and and honestly I I I love that response because one it’s sometimes hard to think of a hot take but I think this is good for people too and I think that’s going to give a lot of people a lot a sense of Peace man because again people are thinking what do I need to have the skills of five five Industries five careers all in one and it’s gonna be on one stupid table no I again there we know about how much this opens up but I am looking forward for you to

56:18 up but I am looking forward for you to hate write that new skills matrix by the way exactly Tommy had a hate write a new blog so we’re doing that so hey you want me to hate write it so you can yeah never never mind well it’s it’s more of like the we’ve just got to get it out cuz you you’ve inspired me with fire under my heart to to go write the blog and get the extra things out there yeah I I think in general like the Fantastic part about fabric is we’ve got this new Rich ecosystem of all the data things right

56:48 ecosystem of all the data things right and ultimately it means the Big Data projects and all the things that that we would want to do are in a centralized location location the the unanswered question is how do you maybe not unanswered like not fully fleshed out in terms of process is what I’d love to have as a realm where it’s like how do we how do we like what does it look like to deliver quick wins and then move that into a structured

57:18 then move that into a structured architecture a as time goes on right because you’re going to have a push pull which exists today in that you want to deliver fast but you’re also maybe just connecting all those sources directly into powerbi but the data engineers and the central Pi team and like or the data team itself right is has a warehouse or it has these centralized data stores where they have 80 80% of all of the data you

57:48 they have 80 80% of all of the data you just connected to but they don’t have the 20% in order for your you to build your report they need the 20% well okay that that new pipelines new ETL added into the central data stores it would be better that your model then connect to their Central sources of certified data right because there’s slas and things behind that and trust and whatever and it’s not all your business logic isn’t buried in in your your Clos model Silo

58:18 buried in in your your Clos model Silo of the ETL right so it’s like how do we take we talked about that for years right even without fabric how do you take that and upgrade it and I think like with fabric maybe hopefully there’s a better opportunity to do that I’m and I’m I’m I’m very much in your corner on this one Seth because I think this is a a major talking point when you’re building these things this is why I think The Medallion architecture exists there’s a clear place to apply a large amount of business logic and one of the one of the

58:49 business logic and one of the one of the notes Here I think I’m making my mind here around this is the reason The Medallion architecture exists is because none of data coming from your Source system is going to match what you need to do in the report so there’s two major places where you place business logic it’s going to be measures and how the tables relate and then it’s going to be data Transformations on the raw data which is going to live in your silver layer and I think that’s why these ex these zones exist because if you’re changing something fundamental you can decide okay what change do I need to make is that a change that can be handled by a measure then it goes to

59:20 be handled by a measure then it goes to the model the the the the data Mark whatever you want to call it right if it’s a more fundamental change and I’m going to have to recompute something over and over and over again every time someone clicks on a visual then that doesn’t make sense to be a measure that makes sense to materialize it or do that work one time Upstream in the silver layer so it’s I think it’s giving me more clearly Clarity on like where I should be doing these operations when you have a nice design for what what zones do you do this work in love it really good conversation some really

59:50 it really good conversation some really good comments here I want to also note here Enterprise AR you make a really good point around the the difference between generalist and Specialists is most companies won’t pay for a generalist to generally know all the things companies want to buy specialists in certain areas you hire for specific roles and you look for someone to be an expert in an area I find that to be very true as well it’s a good observation all right anyways thank

60:20 good observation all right anyways thank you very much for your time I really appreciate this one we really know that your time is valuable we hope that you’ve enjoyed your walk or run or bike whatever you’re doing hopefully a good activity here as well with that being said we’d really like it if you found this information useful please go share the blog post around skills Matrix let us know in the comments below what skills we’re missing what should we add is there anything that you experienced in your daily workflows that would be useful inside a skills Matrix we’ really appreciate and like to unpack that with you Tommy where else can you find the

60:51 you Tommy where else can you find the podcast well you can find us in apple Spotify or wherever you at your podcast make sure to subscribe and leave a rating it helps us out a ton do you have an idea a question or a topic that you want us to talk about in a future episode head over to power bi. tips podcast leave your name and a great question join us live every Tuesday and Thursday a. m. Central and join the conversation on all of power. tips social media channels excellent thank you all so much and we’ll see you next time

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