A practical checklist for reporting dashboards
Teams tend to reach for this after something has already gone wrong. Run through this the next time reporting dashboards comes up.
More dashboards rarely produce more decisions. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.
The checklist
- A dashboard nobody opens is not a dashboard
- Fewer numbers, more clearly explained
- Every metric should suggest an action
- Someone is named as the owner
- There is a date to review it again
What it costs to ignore
A dashboard nobody opens is not a dashboard. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.
The short version
Measurement is only useful when someone has agreed in advance what they would do differently. Three things worth confirming about reporting dashboards before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- A dashboard nobody opens is not a dashboard — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.