7th BSPIN Annual Conference Dashboard

7th BSPIN ANNUAL CONFERENCE
2013
25-Jul-13
7TH BSPIN ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2013
JULY 26 & 27 - 2013
Raja Bavani
Chief Architect, Mindtree

27th BSPIN ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2013
Good Morning!
• Let us know each other – introduce yourself!
• What do you expect from this session?
• How do you connect with this topic?
• How is this tutorial going to enable you at
work?

Key things…
Only once
• Coffee break
Always
• Silent, restful electronic devices
• Conversations and experience sharing
• Questions

TOC
• Part 1 - Introduction
• Part 2 - Consumers and their needs
• Part 3 - Building an effective dashboard
• Part 4 - Industry trends
• Part 5 - Parting thoughts

Part 1 - Introduction
• What is a dashboard?
Group Activity 1
Give 3 examples of dashboards you come across
in daily life. How impressive are they? Why?

A dashboard is..
“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
Author of ‘Information Dashboard Design – The
Effective Visual Communication of Data’

Dashboards..
“They provide visibility into key performance indicators (KPIs) through
simple visual graphics such as gauges, charts and tables within a web
browser. Dashboards are appealing because they:
• Present a wide number of different metrics in a single consolidated
view
• Roll up details into high-level summaries
• Provide intuitive indicators, such as gauges and stoplights, that are
instantly understandable - for example, red bar means problem,
green bar means everything is on plan.
In many respects a reporting dashboard can be likened to a dashboard
in an automobile. It provides an 'at-a-glance view' of the current
operational state of the vehicle.”
- Dan Dubriwny and Kurt Rivards

Why do we need?
• Why do we need dashboards?
• Who needs them?

Effective Dashboards
• What makes a dashboard effective? What are
the characteristics?
• Have you come across an effective dashboard?
Why do you think it is effective? Was anything
missing in that dashboard?
• What about efficiency? What does it mean?

The Process
IDENTIFY GATHER PROCESS
ANALYZE
ASSEMBLEPRESENT

Benefits
• What are the expected benefits?
• What are the actual benefits? Share your
experience.

Measures and Metrics
• Context-specific
• Multi-dimensional
• Seasonal
They are the building blocks of dashboards!
Source: Quantitative Management, Transparency and Trust –Raja Bavani

The problem with measures and metrics
• Too many - some are not useful
• Too much time to gather, analyze and report
• Data quality - poor
• Lack of baselines
• Lack of time to analyze
• No contribution to decision making and action
planning
• Not the priority of Senior leaders and executives

Ineffective Dashboards
• What are the disadvantages?

Part 2 – Consumers and their needs
Different types of consumers
• Project team members
• Program manager
• Business unit head
• Location head
• Quality head
• CEO

Examples
Consumers Dashboard Type
Project team Project dashboard
Program manager Project portfolio dashboard or
program dashboard
Business unit head Business unit dashboard
Location head Location dashboard
Quality head Organizational quality dashboard
CEO Organizational quality dashboard*
* Is that sufficient?

Let us try..
Group Activity 2
In your opinion, list the different types of
consumers of dashboards in your industry. How
are their needs different? If you are responsible
for delivering dashboards, how will you decide
the frequency and content?

What is the right size?
• One page?
• One screen?
The fundamental challenge of dashboard design
is to display all the required information on a
single screen:
– clearly and without distraction
– in a manner that can be quickly examined and
understood
– Stephen Few

Cockpit of a commercial jet

Cockpit of a commercial jet
Years of effort went into its design to enable the
pilot to see what’s going on at a glance, even
though there is much information to monitor.
Every time I board a plane, I’m grateful that
knowledgeable designers worked hard to
present this information effectively.
Similar care is needed for the design of our
dashboards.
- Stephen Few

Contents of a dashboard
Group Activity 3
List the contents of a dashboard you use most
frequently. How important are they? Are they
related? What are the key parameters you have
included in your dashboard? How do you want
to represent them? What are the top 3
questions do you want your dashboard to
answer?

Traffic Light
Today’s status
is clear. But
where is the
project
headed?

Traffic Lights
“Unlike traffic lights that automatically change,
projects don’t change unless the project
manager and the team act to change them.
Projects tend to continue in the direction the
team is heading.”
- Johanna Rothman

Weather Report

Which one do you prefer?

Weather Report
Status Description
Sunny The project schedule is on target
Mostly
Sunny
There is minor project schedule concern, but the
schedule can be met.
Partly
Cloudy
There is schedule concern; the schedule can be
met by putting extra efforts.
Cloudy There will be difficulty meeting the schedule.
Rainy To meet the schedule would take great difficulty.
Severe The schedule cannot be met in any situation.
Source: Sunny Skies or Storms? Project Weather Reports by Johanna Rothman

Do you know?
• Hue – a more precise term for what we
normally think of as color (red, green, blue,
purple, etc.)
Folks with normal color
vision see the true
colors.
Those who are color-
blind sees it like this.
( 10% of males and 1%
of females)

Why?
“Despite this fact, many vendors actually
promote the use of red, yellow, and green
stoplight colors as “business intelligence” colors,
the most unintelligent choice.”
- Stephen Few

Cool Gadgets

Charts

What is important?
• Understanding the consumers or customers or
the context
• Not exceeding the size
• Providing the right content
• Removing the unwanted
• Visual communication

So far….
Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - Consumers and their needs
• Part 3 - Building an effective dashboard

Part 3 – Building an effective dashboard
1. Metrics Selection
2. Visual Representation
3. Correctness
4. Accessibility
5. Usability

3.1 Metrics Selection
• Choose what matters the most
• Do these metrics connect to the
project/program/organizational vision?
• Do the consumers of your dashboard
understand these metrics?

GQMM
Goals-Questions-Measures
Goal 1
Question 1
Measure 1 Measure 2
Question 2
Measure 3 Measure 4
Goal 2
Question 3
Ref: “Goal Question Model Paradigm” In Encyclopedia of Software Engineering,
1st edition, John Wiley & Sons, 1994 - Victor R. Basili and Rombach H Dieter

Hierarchy of Goals
Goals are hierarchical !
Goal 1
Question 1
Measure 1
Measure 2
Question 2
Measure 3
Measure 4
Goal 2 Question 3

3.2 Visual Representation
• Is it easy to understand ?
• Does it communicate the key things?
• Is it intuitive or hard to learn?
• Are the representations effective?

Any examples?
• We discussed some examples before
• Do you want to share your experience?

3.3 Correctness
• Is the data current?
• Are the metrics reflecting the current
challenges?
• Is the data relevant to where you are headed?

3.4 Accessibility
• Is your dashboard accessible?
• Are people aware?
• Is it simple to access?
• Do people access it at an expected frequency?

3.5 Usability
• Is it easy to use?
• Is it static or interactive or intelligent?
• Is it simple to use?
• Does it communicate the key things using the
right representations, colors, etc.?

2 more questions
• What can be removed from this dashboard?
• What is missing in this dashboard?

Enablers vs. Drivers
Enablers
‘reinforce’
the Drivers
Drivers
‘ensure’
Results

Do you know?
• What are lagging indicators?
• What are leading indicators?

Lagging Indicators
Lagging indicators are outcome measures that
help you gauge progress by examining the final
end result or outcomes of your collective efforts.
• Indicates the end result.
• Tells you what occurred, not what is going on.
Examples: Customer Retention, Attrition Rate,
Defect Density

Why lagging indicators?
• Lagging indicators have a direct impact on
margins.
• Improvement in lagging indicators means
enhancing business results!

Leading Indicators
Leading indicators are process measures that
help you gauge incremental progress you are
making toward key outcome (lagging) measures.
• Immediate feedback or early warning
• Tells what is happening now
• Can be tracked over time to improve end
results
Examples: Network Availability, Customer
Feedback

Why Leading Indicators?
• Leading indicators have an indirect impact on
margins.
• Improvement in leading indicators means
enhancing business results over a period of
time.

Try this!
Group Activity 4
All of us drive cars. What are the leading and
lagging indicators related to driving your car
from one place to another?
At work, what are the leading and lagging
indicators?

Balanced Scorecard
• Also known as business scorecard
• Originated by Drs. Robert Kaplan (Harvard
Business School) and David Norton
• Performance measurement framework that
added strategic non-financial performance
measures to traditional financial metrics
• Gives managers and executives a more
'balanced' view of organizational
performance.

Balanced Scorecard
Vision
and
Strategy
Customer
Financial
Internal
Business
Processes
Learning and
Development

From Mission to Outcomes
Source: Robert S.
Kaplan and David P.
Norton, The strategy
focused organization
How Balanced
Scorecard companies
thrive in the new
business environment,
Harvard Business
School Press, Boston,
Mass, 2001

Question
How can we apply BSC concepts in designing
dashboards?

Try this!
Group Activity 5
Consider a dashboard you create or consume at
work. Is it balanced?
How can you apply BSC concepts to your
dashboard?

Well-designed dashboards
• Exceptionally well-organized
• Condensed – primarily in the form of
summaries and exceptions
• Specific to and customized for the audience
and the objectives
• Displayed using concise and often small media
that communicate the data and its message in
the clearest and most direct way as possible

So far…
Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - Consumers and their needs
Part 3 - Building an effective dashboard

Part 4 – Industry Trends
• Large electronic visual boards
• Real time data
• Intelligent dashboards
• Interactive dashboards
• Enterprise Application Integration(EAI) &
Business Intelligence (BI) adding power to
dashboards
• Design and maintenance – a big challenge!

Part 5 – Parting Thoughts
Group Activity 6
What are the 5 things you learned in this
tutorial? What are the top 3 takeaways for your
group?
How are you planning to apply this at work?
What are your next steps?

Q&A

References
• Information Dashboard Design, The Effective Visual
Communication of Data, Stephen Few, O’Reilly, 2006
• Show Me the Numbers, Designing Tables and Graphs to
Enlighten, Stephen Few, Analytics Press, 2004
• http://www.prepetualedge.com
• Implementing the IT Balanced Scorecard, Jessica
Keyes , Auerbach Publications, 2005

THANK YOU!

7th BSPIN Annual Conference Dashboard

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