Power BI portfolio projects: questions, models and checks

1. Sales performance

Use synthetic order and refund records. Define gross order value, refunds and net value separately. Build a monthly trend and a category breakdown, then reconcile totals to the source. Deliver a metric dictionary and a note explaining the date and currency rules.

2. Customer return behaviour

Use fictional first-purchase and repeat-purchase dates. Define the return window and include only cohorts with complete follow-up. Display cohort counts alongside rates. Explain why a recent cohort cannot yet supply a 30-day measure.

3. Delivery reliability

Create promised and actual delivery dates with some missing outcomes. Define which orders belong in the on-time denominator. Show late deliveries by an operationally relevant segment and keep undelivered records visible.

4. Marketing costs and attributed outcomes

Build a synthetic spend-and-orders model. Show ad spend, attributed revenue and the chosen acquisition-cost definition. Document attribution assumptions and avoid labelling reported ROAS as incremental profit.

5. Data-quality monitoring

Track duplicate keys, missing required values and data freshness across fictional daily batches. Include a failed batch and a late arrival. A daily refreshed report is a daily snapshot, not a real-time system.

Make each project reviewable

• State the audience and decision in a short introduction.
• Show the model grain and relationships.
• Document each measure’s filters and denominator.
• Include at least one reconciliation or edge-case check.
• Label units and refresh time; inspect the mobile layout.
• Explain a finding, a limitation and the next investigation.

Share only data you can publish

Use synthetic data or a dataset whose licence permits your intended use. Screenshots plus a methodology page can demonstrate the work without an interactive public report.

Power BI Publish to web makes a report publicly accessible, including underlying model data, and is not a way to protect confidential information with row-level security. Availability depends on licence and administrator settings. Check Microsoft’s publishing requirements before sharing.

Describe impact accurately

A portfolio report demonstrates your work; it does not prove a business achieved savings. Separate a suggested action from a measured outcome. Use the project-story guide to present it.