Beginning Power BI for Business Users

2From Data to Insight

There are many things in life for which you should take the time to understand the why before you try.

Learning the why behind Power BI is one of those things. This chapter is about the why of using any tool that uses these two words to describe itself: visual and analytics. If you take time reading through this chapter before jumping in, you'll realize greater short- and long-term rewards.

In the short term, you'll reap greater rewards because you will have the big picture in mind for why we're going through some of the very detailed—and maybe seemingly odd—steps that we'll cover in later chapters. It will be easy to get lost in those details and forget where we're headed or, worse, give up. But if you have the roadmap in your head, you'll know there's a reason for everything you're learning.

In the long term, you'll benefit because you will be creating content that has a high degree of usefulness. How so? First, you'll create content in such a way that considers how the human brain works and processes information. Second, because you'll design for the human brain, you'll have a greater chance of achieving the goal of helping your users arrive at insight.

So, let me ask this of you: if you are too excited to wait and want to just jump right in and skip this chapter, then will you please consider coming back to this chapter after you feel comfortable building Power BI content but before you deliver to your users?

THREE GUIDING PRINCIPLES

If I could reduce ...