Why Self-Service BI Fails Without Centralized Metric Governance

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Self-service business intelligence tools promised to let non-technical users answer their own data questions, reducing the burden on data teams. In practice, different departments create conflicting definitions for the same metrics, such as 'active users' or 'revenue,' leading to inconsistent reports across the organization. Data teams end up spending time reconciling these discrepancies rather than building infrastructure, effectively becoming a help desk for the BI tool. Popular open-source options like Metabase, Superset, and Lightdash democratize data access but lack a semantic layer, meaning users query raw tables without shared business context. Experts argue that true self-service BI requires governed, centrally defined metrics — not just open access to data.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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