PBIP Gave Us Git. Skills Made Everyone Use It the Same Way.

Last week I wrote about moving a production model to PBIP.

Git was the big win. But like most BI teams, we came from PBIX files, not Git.

A new format, a new tool and a new process, all at once. I wanted everyone to feel comfortable, and still follow the right steps every time.

Seven steps, every change

1. 1.Create a branch from the latest main
2. 2.Open Power BI Desktop
3. 3.Make the change
4. 4.Save
5. 5.Commit
6. 6.Push
7. 7.Create a pull request

For someone who lives in Git, that's muscle memory. For someone new to it, it's seven chances to get stuck, and a reason to avoid the change altogether.

We packaged the process as skills and scripts

So the process lives in the repo now, not in people's heads.

Every step is written as a skill, a procedure an AI coding agent can follow. The same steps also exist as plain scripts, so it works without an agent too.

You ask, or you run the script, and it goes the same way for everyone.

The only part that stays human is the part that should: making the change in Desktop.

The ticket number does the rest

We work from tickets. You enter the ticket number once at the start. It names the branch, and the PR carries it every time, so no one retypes it by hand.

That's what makes promotion simple. When a ticket is ready for UAT or production, we pick the build by its ticket number. No searching through branches for which change belongs to which request.

The PR isn't just for the reviewer. It's written for the pipeline too.