In all enterprise dashboard projects, there is a struggle to define what should be monitored. The users don't always know what they really want. Your job is to help define their vision. There is a must-try KPI requirements tool called the KPI Wheel that is made possible by the geniuses at BrightPoint Consulting. It is discussed at http://infommersion.com/Learning/nl_1005_art2.html. As BrightPoint explains:
In order to help with the requirements interview process, BrightPoint Consulting has created a tool called the KPI Wheel. The interview process is very rarely a structured linear conversation, and more often is an organic free-flowing exchange of ideas and questions. The KPI Wheel allows us to have a naturally flowing conversation with the end-user while at the same time keeping us focused on the goal of gathering specific requirements.
The KPI Wheel is tool that can be used to collect all the specific information that will go into defining and visualizing a metric or KPI. We will use this tool to collect the following information:
- The business question that we are trying to help the user answer.
- Which business users this question would apply to.
- Why the question is important.
- Where data resides to answer this question.
- What further questions this metric or KPI could raise.
- What actions or decisions could be taken with this information
- The specific measure, dimension, grain and target of the metric or KPI.
Enterprise Dashboarders should try out this interactive tool. It's a Flex-based tool that brings you through the requirements interviewing processes and even lets you save or print out your work. If you want info on the process, read this explaination. Here's a screenshot:
Correction: Please note that as Tom Gonzalez (Managing Director, BrightPoint Consulting), pointed out to me, "This tool was actually created in Xcelsius (not Flex). But we are working on a complete dashboard framework and toolset based on Flex 2.0 and MS SQL 2005." Thanks Tom, sorry! Watch for more samples of the great BI presentation work this outfit does.
So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy's favorite books.
Department managers know the difficulty of allocating human resources across multiple projects. What is the correct level of staffing necessary to both handle the workload quickly yet also be most cost effective? From a few years back comes this project/resource executive dashboard from http://www.innerfacedesign.com/pr_pipeline.html. It’s a fine looking dashboard by a talented designer that tracks projects not only from a current load perspective, but also from a pipeline viewpoint. On the top of the screen we have projects (current, pipeline and backlog). On the bottom of the screenshot we see resources by role and their utilization. This example uses a scenario of a User Interface Design Group and their project pipeline. The manager using this executive dashboard would look to balance the resources with the shifting project pipeline to try to optimize his productivity. Interesting graphical approach to a common departmental problem.
So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s favorite books.
This is the final enterprise dashboard screenshot in our series from http://www.itcsoftware.com/art-globalsoftwaremgtIntro.htm. Of course, when dealing with an IT consulting project, we always want to track time spent on the project (funny thing - people want to get paid!). Here, we see the section of the engagement management application that deals with tracking timesheets. This dashboard shows the project resources, their hourly pay rates, and a mechanism to approve or reject the timesheets.
Hope you enjoyed this series of executive dashboard screenshots. For those of us on the IT consulting side, the engagement measurements of profitability and resource allocation are old hat, but hopefully it was new and interesting to those of you on the business side.
So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy's favorite books.
Nice dashboards, right? We continue this series of IT consulting engagement management / application development enterprise dashboard series from http://www.itcsoftware.com/art-globalsoftwaremgtIntro.htm. In this post, we take a look at the defect tracking and change request screens.
This screenshot show the entry of a programming defect. It is straight-forward and has fields for description, severity, dependencies, assignment to a project resource, comments, etc.
This screenshot is the edit mode for a change request. It has fields for impact, cost, priorty, etc.
So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy's favorite books.
