This enterprise dashboard screenshot is censored at the request of the Dashboard Spy at one of the major financial firms. This is a project status dashboard that is most often distributed at the company not electronically, but by printing it out and sending it via interoffice mail. It seems that the higher up the manager, the more they want it on paper. It is limited to a single page and, as seen in the name "One Minute Manager", it is meant to quickly bring a manager up to speed on project status and next steps. The Dashboard Spy that smuggled this out for me actually brought out a sheet of paper and scanned it. He apologies for the crooked scan job!
As you can see, this executive dashboard is text heavy. The graphics are simple red/green/yellow representations of project state. The company has standardized on this layout as the project status reporting format. At the top of the page is project information and the overall status. Below that we have last month's actual activities, the current month's planned activities, and longer term planned activities. The right hand side has open issues and project risks.
Homework: Project management is a favorite dashboarding subject. If you need to review the science behind the metrics of project management, check these books on project metrics. In particular, this book focuses on project scorecards: The Project Management Scorecard: Measuring the Success of Project Management Solutions
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 on business dashboards.
