[dgudkov]

Many good points. Nevertheless self-service analytics is the only way to give business users what they need in a reasonable time frame. We've already seen what happens when every little change request has to be implemented by IT people -- time to production becomes weeks and months, instead of hours. Perhaps, there should be some kind of framework with reasonable restrictions and simplifications. But that's a very open question. I've yet to see a good example of a reasonably restricted self-service.

[sgt101]

There are other ways - for example if IT is embedded in a team and works hand in hand with them for a sprint rather than via change requests and so on.

[dgudkov]

That's usually the best way to organize BI teams. The problem with this approach is that embedded teams don't have strategic scope. For instance, they do not build or manage enterprise data warehouses. Therefore, embedded teams tend to have rather limited influence.