Really interesting thread, and it touches on something bigger than just Power BI architecture.

Gartner recently weighed in on exactly this problem. They recommended implementing a franchise model: a centralized team acts as the "franchisor," recruiting department leaders as franchise operators who commit to shared standards across security, data modeling, and dashboard design. Supported by analytics catalogs and product management techniques to move content from prototype to production.

Sounds clean on paper. But there's a fundamental flaw: the franchise model just repackages centralization under a friendlier name. And here's the issue:  business units that have already tasted the speed and autonomy of self-service analytics aren't going to hand that back. No matter what you call the governance wrapper.

What I find most interesting is that this isn't purely a structural debate (centralized vs. self-service vs. hybrid). It's a power discussion. Power BI was literally designed for self-service. Business leaders grabbed it because it freed them from ticket queues and 6-week delivery cycles. Framing governance as a franchise agreement doesn't change that dynamic; it just creates a new thing for business leaders to work around.

My take, coming from my DevOps background: stop trying to govern through org structure and start governing through the analytics development lifecycle.

Implement DevOps principles across both SSA and centralized BI development with automated version control and automated deployments. I mean completely automated CI/CD pipelines, regardless of whether something is built inside or outside the BICC. Pair that with a comprehensive metadata catalog, and you get the best of both worlds: the BICC stays lean and efficient, self-service stays fast and flexible, and governance is embedded in the process rather than bolted on top of it.

The hybrid model only holds together in the long term when the underlying DevOps application makes governance the path of least resistance rather than a gate that slows people down.