Resources for Dashboard Project Managers

So you’ve been assigned to manage an executive dashboard project. Or maybe you’re an information technology manager put in charge of managing a user experience team for the first time. Obviously, you need to quickly get up to speed in terms of the unique challenges of enterprise dashboard projects and people. How do you learn to manage a user interface design team when they seem so different from the folks you usually manage?

Topics like this and many more related to business intelligence dashboards, scorecards and data visualization interfaces are up for discussion over at the new URL for The Dashboard Spy site on dashboards and the enterprise-dashboard.com blog on dashboard examples.

Back to how to manage a good user experience team for your dashboard project. Here’s a great graphic that explains what characteristics you need to look for when hiring for user experience teams. Not just any old-school business analyst will do. Look for ability to make pretty deliverables, clear communicator, clear thinker, consulting experience, creativity, education, enthusiasm, fit with the team, information architecture, interaction design, strategy, personas, research, good listener, interest in learning new things, presentation skills, personal work style, personality, quick learner, software proficiency, talent, variety of work and years of experience. A person like that will certainly be invaluable on your dashboard team.

 Tags: Dashboard Design Team, Dashboard, Dashboards, Dashboard Project Management, Business Intelligence Dashboards

Business Intelligence White Papers and Reports – Secret PDF Links from The Dashboard Spy

Business Intelligence White Papers resource now active. Sign up for trade business magazines in your industry vertical.

Most readers of The Dashboard Spy, a blog devoted to tracking the design of business intelligence interfaces such as executive dashboards, scorecards and enterprise reporting suites, realize that, for quite a while now, the Dashboard Spy web address has changed. The new material appears at The Dashboard Spy Website and The Enterprise Dashboard Screenshot Blog.

For readers who find this dashboarding material through search engines or for those with old links, I have occassionaly posted reminders such as this update. I try to include snippets of the content found at the new dashboard resource locations.

Today I include some random links to valuable business intelligence white papers and reports. On The Dashboard Spy, I sometimes include these “secret” pdf links. They go to resources on enterprise IT that are quite valuable, but commonly believed to be unavailable on the web. They are high-cost papers, survey results and findings documents that are sometimes made publicly available by the various companies that purchase them. The links are difficult to find, because they come and go, but, hey, that’s what the Dashboard Spy does best, doesn’t he?

Gartner 2007 IT Spending and Staffing Report for North America
This annual key publication by Gartner release survey results that summarize the state of IT Spending and Staffing levels. Always a must-read for the executive IT crowd.

Gartner 2006 Magic Quadrant for Offshore Application Services
The well-known “Magic Quadrant” is how Gartner evaluates the vendor landscape for IT products. Here they rank Offshore Application Services (outsourcing) vendors using criteria such as “ability to execute” and “completeness of vision”.

Gartner Top Predictions for 2006 and Beyond
Each year, Gartner releases to much acclaim their predictions for the IT industry. This report includes a very interesting section on the IT workforce in which Gartner discusses the “Rise of the IT Versatilists” – a breed of IT people with general business skills.

The Myth of Versatilists
- This is a good article that argues against the Gartner IT staffing outlook put forth in the previous pdf and examines the increasing need for IT specialists.

Enjoy this smattering of BI and IT subjects and come over to the new resources where we are having a lot of fun and learning a lot about business dashboards.

Regards, The Dashboard Spy

PS. We have also continued our tracking of good books of value to the dashboarding community. Have you looked at Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design or Key Performance Indicators: Developing, Implementing,and Using Winning KPIs?

Tags: Dashboard, BI Links, Business Intelligence Resources, Dashboard White Paper, Dashbaord, Dashbaords