From Junior to Senior Power BI Developer. What might this path look like? What to watch out for? What to follow? We talked about this with our PowerBi team and prepared a few tips for you:
1. Passion and commitment
- Think about what fascinates you most about working with data. It doesn’t have to be a complicated DAX model or a simple business dashboard – the most important thing is to explore new possibilities with enthusiasm.
- Read articles on SQLBI, watch tutorials on YouTube, participate in webinars – all this costs only your time and allows you to quickly understand what working with data models is all about.
2. Understanding the entire design process
- Juniors often focus solely on the visual layer, the frontend. We encourage you to figure out the backend: writing SQL queries, designing relationships in the model, and even optimizing the performance of Power BI itself.
- Try working on the AdventureWorks SQL Server sample database – it’s the perfect place to practice, thanks to which you will learn how to work on a “living organism” and find a great basis for learning warehouse structures.
- Remember that the most important step is to collect requirements from the business – find out what your users really need, and only then build a dashboard that answers their questions.
3. Access to Power BI Service without barriers
- Did you know that you can test Power BI Service completely for free? Just join the Microsoft Developer Program. Thanks to this, you gain access to work in the cloud, testing automatic refreshes and team collaboration. The package includes free MS Office 365, almost a hundred other licenses and a great place to exchange experiences with people at a similar stage to you!
- We encourage every Junior to familiarize themselves with Power BI Online from the very first weeks – the sooner you learn the mechanisms of publishing and sharing, the easier it will be to move to the Senior level, where managing access and data security is key.
4. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box
- In the world of BI, you will often encounter unusual business requirements: reports imported from ERP systems, predictive analyses or dynamic sales dashboards. If you learn to think outside the box and allow yourself to experiment, you become more resistant to any unconventional situations.
- Learn from your own mistakes – feedback from more experienced colleagues is invaluable support. This is how you gather the experience that differentiates Junior from Senior.
5. Communication in plain language
- While we often talk about fact tables, relationships, and DAX, your job is to convey the results of your analysis in the simplest way possible: understandable to managers, directors, and non-technical people.
- “Translate” complicated metrics into business language. It is the ability to communicate clearly that makes it possible, in addition to the technical knowledge passed on to people, to build a bridge between data and business decisions.in plain language
6. Community and knowledge exchange
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Join forums (Power BI Community, Reddit), share your reports on GitHub, write blogs, publish articles.
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The more you share your ideas, the faster you get constructive feedback.
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Collaborate with others – try to work as much as possible with people who are more experienced than you, they are a mine of knowledge and experience that are often hard to catch at the beginning.
To sum up:
The path from Junior to Senior in Power BI is a process in which the following are key:
- passion and willingness to learn new technologies,
- understanding the full design cycle (from requirements to visualization),
- thinking outside the box and learning from your own mistakes,
- the ability to think logically and simplify complex data,
- active participation in the community.