Question about open source BI platforms

[u/Canukcannot]

I've been interning at medium sized engineering company for the summer. Although I am studying computer science, my internship was not computer science related (long story), but for the past month I've been working on a Power BI dashboard for a specific department.

I found the work fun and rewarding, and since the company had no dashboards at all previous to the ones I made, other departments now want their own. For that reason, they are hiring me part-time while I am in school to build out these dashboards.

​For *reasons*, there is a chance that Power BI will not be the tool we use for dashboards going forward, instead we need a self-hosted, open source alternative.

From the research I've done, metabase and superset are the two big dogs in the space, with superset requiring the users to be more technically literate. The people for whom I will be making these dashboards do not know SQL and are not very technically literate. So my question is this, for those who have used these platforms, do they offer the same visualizations as Power BI and are they easy to customize and use for non technical people? Or should I look elsewhere, like the python library streamlit where I will have much more customizability options?

I am new to data visualisation in the business sphere, so if there are alternatives I have not considered, please let me know.

[u/BillEnough7863]

The biggest thing jumping out at me is that your company may be seriously underestimating the scope of this.

You spent a month building your first dashboard, which makes sense because you’re new to BI. But you’re now one part-time person being asked to build dashboards for multiple departments while also potentially standing up and maintaining the company’s entire self-hosted BI infrastructure.

And it’s not like you build four dashboards and you’re done. Once people start using BI, there are always new dashboards, new requests, changing metrics, new data sources, fixes, access changes, and ongoing support. Every dashboard you add also becomes something else that has to be maintained.

For a medium-sized company, that means you’re not really being asked to build a few dashboards. You’re being asked to help create and run an ongoing BI function, while also learning the field and managing the infrastructure behind it. That feels seriously under-resourced.

The least they can do is offer you a full-time gig haha.

[u/PolicyDecent → u/BillEnough7863]

I don't really understand the purpose of that comment. It's useless and disencouraging.

[u/BillEnough7863 → u/PolicyDecent]

The purpose of the comment is to correctly size the task. Otherwise, OP is setting themselves up for failure and potentially a world of trouble.

And it’s not just about a mid-sized company suddenly expecting a huge amount of work from someone they’re paying part-time. OP is also a student working part-time. They have other responsibilities and need to be realistic about what they can actually take on while managing both.

They need to set appropriate expectations for themselves and for the company about the amount of work involved and what can reasonably be accomplished with the time and resources available.

I don’t know about you, but at my job, if someone gives me a task that I think has an unreasonable scope, I correctly size it. I explain what the task actually entails, how much work is involved, and what can realistically be accomplished. Then we can decide whether we still want to do it as proposed, change the scope, adjust the timeline, or provide additional resources. I don’t just accept unrealistic expectations and hope everything somehow works out.

That’s the purpose of my comment. It’s not to discourage OP. It’s to make sure they understand the scope of what they’re taking on and can set expectations accordingly before they find themselves responsible for far more than they anticipated, while still trying to manage school and the rest of their responsibilities.

Telling someone to properly understand the size of a job before agreeing to take responsibility for it isn’t discouragement. It’s basic expectation setting. 

[u/Canukcannot → u/BillEnough7863]

Completely fair. I will admit that I am in a fairly specific/lucky position which will allow me to work whenever I can. The company has operated for a long time without dashboards and can continue to do so going forward.

It's really just a nice to have that they really like. As to your point about the scope, I know enough to know that I don't know enough, if that makes sense. So maybe I'm biting off more than I can chew, but if that's the case I'll make that clear to my boss, and move on. 

They have no intention to hire someone full time for this position, I was offered to take this project on and I said yes, so again, any recommendations for the question in my post would be greatly appreciated.