Building People-Centric Dashboards

By Todd Van Haaren

Today we have dozens of systems tracking all kinds of enterprise information. There are a variety of transformation and change initiatives around defining what we should measure to improve performance. And, of course, for government agencies there are scorecards, scorecards and mandatory scorecards to report on.

It seems obvious, but as we’ve learned in practice, the idea of a Dashboard means different things to different people. The idea of a dashboard itself is easy for a top leader to imagine and plays on the desire to be able to see the overall health of his or her enterprise. In fact, many of the positive responses are because of what we call the “eye-candy” factor.  And, virtually everyone can relate to the idea of their car’s dashboard containing key measures of command performance, positive or negative. For the purposes of this article, we turn to noted author Stephen Few for a definition of a dashboard:

“A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance.”   ^_Stephen Few, “Dashboard Confusion,” Intelligent Enterprise, March 20, 2004

This definition hardly needs improvement, but for the government or the military we also include:

“A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives, visualize current operations and evaluate key measures of organizational health; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance.”

Given this definition, it is obvious that dashboards can include a wide expanse of functionality. The traditional IT approach is to gather data and present it quickly, usually in pie chart or bar graph format.  Frequently there is a lack of overall requirements gathering and the focus is in satisfying the leader without thought to what would be meaningful to those who need to act on the data.

Before jumping into the technology we should consider the overall approach.  To be clear, building a dashboard is technically easy. The software and development is rarely a problem. If you’re fortunate enough to be using SharePoint, you will find that you have a few tools at your disposal to help you get started as well as a place to host your dashboard.

However, transforming the data into actionable information has its roots in the people who need to consume the information. Getting people to use the tool to promote operational awareness and improved decision making is another challenge altogether. Very often when software vendors demonstrate dashboards they often go for the eye catching use of colors, dials and gauges. This approach is focused only on the technology dimension of the project and forgets people and process are at the heart of improving organizational performance. Instead of focusing on the eye-candy that the software can produce- the "magic"- technology should be implemented at the speed of people.

In order to effectively transform the data so it can be useful across varying levels of the organization we turn to our four pillars of adoption—people, process, learning and technology.  The people and process must come first, as they will drive the necessary learning model and choosing the most appropriate tool for the audience.   While by no means the only aspects to be considered, some of the most important people and process questions to ask include:

·         What are the different audiences who will use the system?

·         How interactive will the reports need to be?

·         Do they need the ability to pull down and manipulate the data themselves?

·         What about additional content alongside for added context (such as policy documents)?

·         If a user needs to ask a question about a metric, how do they find the right person?

·         How can they reach them?

·         What if they want to initiate a workflow to take action?

You can create something that will really make an impact and get results for your organization by not simply focusing on implementing technology but rather on the people actually using the solution.  There are other areas on which to base dashboard requirements that center on the data, but answering the people questions first will help keep those areas on track to deliver effective, visually appealing dashboards.  In our next newsletter we’ll outline some of the common pitfalls that occur in dashboard design and provide some tips on how to help avoid them.

If you would like to learn more about how AKG can help you leverage your SharePoint implementation with effective business intelligence, please contact us today!