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Project Scope

What This Framework Is

A structured, reusable documentation framework for Power BI semantic models and reporting projects. It provides markdown templates, practical guides, and a worked example that help teams document their models consistently.

The framework is designed for teams that need to:

  • Document semantic models for handover, onboarding, or audit purposes
  • Standardize how measures, tables, relationships, and Power Query logic are described
  • Maintain a living record of KPI definitions, business terms, and design decisions
  • Reduce the cost of context-switching between projects by using a common structure

Who It Is For

  • Power BI developers documenting their own models
  • BI analysts maintaining shared reporting assets
  • Analytics engineers working across multiple semantic models
  • Consultants handing off dashboards and data models to clients or internal teams
  • Reporting teams that need governance, traceability, and handover documentation

What It Covers

  • 14 markdown templates covering model overview, tables, columns, measures, relationships, Power Query, reports, KPIs, business glossary, refresh/deployment, handovers, issues/decisions, and release notes
  • A complete worked example using a generic support operations analytics model
  • 8 practical guides for getting started, documenting new models, keeping docs current, adapting the framework, and maintaining it as an open-source project
  • Claude Code integration with project-level instructions and reusable skills for common documentation workflows

Non-goals

This framework is explicitly not the following:

  • Not a Power BI theme pack or visual design system. It does not include report themes, color palettes, or layout templates.
  • Not a DAX tutorial or learning course. It documents measures but does not teach DAX from scratch.
  • Not a metadata extraction tool. It does not automatically pull table definitions or measure lists from .pbix files. Automated extraction is a roadmap aspiration, not a current feature.
  • Not tied to any single company's workflow. The templates and conventions are generic. Teams should adapt them to their own standards.
  • Not a replacement for enterprise governance tooling. Tools like Microsoft Purview, Collibra, or Atlan serve different purposes at a different scale. This framework is complementary - it provides lightweight, file-based documentation that works in any repository without requiring additional infrastructure.
  • Not a data catalog. It documents individual models, not an organization-wide inventory of all datasets and reports.

Design Principles

  1. Useful without any specific tool. The framework is plain markdown. It works with any editor, any repository host, and any workflow.
  2. Structure over volume. A well-organized set of short, focused documents is better than a single long specification.
  3. Practical over theoretical. Templates include concrete field descriptions and examples, not abstract instructions.
  4. Generic over proprietary. All content is designed for broad reuse. No company-specific conventions are baked in.
  5. Maintainable over comprehensive. The framework should be easy to keep current. If a template creates maintenance burden without clear value, it should not exist.