Premium/Fabric requests often bundle distribution and incremental refresh. Force the team to split the business case. Incremental is a modeling feature that still fails if RangeStart/RangeEnd do not fold.
Artefacts before budget approval
- Before/after refresh duration on the finance dataset (screenshots from refresh history: start, end, Status).
- Named IT owner of the watermark column (ModifiedDate or equivalent) and how late postings are handled.
- Reconciliation pack after the first historical load: trial balance / key KPI vs ERP for two close cycles.
Reject vague sizing talk
“The PBIX is large” is not enough. Ask for VertiPaq Analyzer size by table, monthly row growth on the largest fact, and whether Import against a warehouse mart is cheaper than capacity solely to enable incremental. If detect-data-changes is required for adjustments, confirm the change-detection column is indexed on SQL — otherwise each incremental cycle still scans heavily.
Hold capacity spend until a steward is named who receives Failure notifications when a partition refresh Status = Failed.