A building goes up a floor at a time, and each floor is checked before the next goes on it. The report was built the same way: six phases, with a stop after each one.
with Elizabeth Cecilia. Tap any underlined word for a quick definition.
Have the report open. The lessons point at real pages and tiles. The .pbix opens in Power BI Desktop; the PDF works on any device, but things like View as and the i buttons need Desktop.
The first version of the brief split the build into six s. Each one had a job and a check:
Phase 0Read and report. Build nothing.
Phase 1The semantic model, and the smallest report that opens.
Phase 2The measures, the basis measures and the four roles.
Phase 3The three new pages.
Phase 4The four original pages.
Phase 5Tidy: page order, theme, slicer sync, a handover.
Phase 0 asked the agent to read the brief, both specs, the workbook ReadMe, the DAX files, the build guide and the seed, then report what was there, what was missing, anything that contradicted, and its plan.
Predict first: Phase 0 builds nothing at all. Why start with it?
01
Stop after every phase
The brief ended each phase the same way:
After each phase: run the validator, commit to git with a plain message, write down what you did, what you assumed and what is open, then stop and wait.
Each is where the person opens the project in Desktop and checks it. How the stop and the go-ahead work is covered in Three in the loop.
Predict first: What does a stop after each phase give you that one long run doesn't?
02
Phase 1: a model you can open
Phase 1 built all 32 tables, but also the smallest valid report: one empty page, copied from the seed. That was enough for Desktop to open the project. The check was:
Open it, set WorkbookPath, refresh, and check the s against model_spec.json.
Predict first: Why build an empty report page in phase 1, before any pages are due?
03
Phase 2: check numbers you already know
After the measures went in, the check wasn't "look at everything". It was a handful of figures already known from the :
Plus one test of the roles: viewed as Associate partner, production must show and the cobalt price must not.
Check it in the report: the first three are on Commodity: world and Commodity: EU with Cobalt selected; the lithium figure is in Raw materials that demand requires on Battery materials, Base case.
Predict first: The validator already passed. Why also check four figures by hand?
04
Model first, so it can stand alone
The order follows the brief's priority: the model and the measures matter most, pages come second. The plan went further. Phases 1 and 2 had to be complete and clean on their own, so the build could stop there and still be worth having.
Predict first: Why make the first two phases complete on their own?
05
Tidying is a phase too
Phase 5 had no new pages. It set the page order and theme, synced slicers across pages, turned off data export on restricted-use visuals, ran the validator one last time, and wrote a short listing what to check by eye in Desktop, page by page.
Predict first: Why end with a list of what to check by eye?
06
Floor by floor
Every floor checked before the next went on. Next lesson: the register, the table that says what every tile's number is.
Read and report before building. Stop after every phase. Check each layer with numbers you already know.
Order the work so that every stop leaves something you could use.
Terms in this lesson
Earn 5 XP for every term you know.
Get the project files
Everything is free on GitHub. Open the report next to the lessons and check each step for yourself.
The whole project
The Power BI project, the seed project, the specs and the tools: the whole kit. On the GitHub page, click the green Code button, then Download ZIP, and unzip it anywhere.
The Critical Raw Materials Intelligence report as a single .pbix file to open in Power BI Desktop. Open the latest release under Releases, then Assets, on the right of the GitHub page.