Dashboard

Business Intelligence Dashboard study: Let’s take a look at the most important phase of a performance dashboard project - the requirements phase.

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 the Managing Director at 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. 

Tags: Business Dashboard, Excel Dashboard, Business Intelligence, Enterprise Reporting, Enterprise Business Intelligence

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.

What do you think about this dashboard post? Please leave a comment. Your opinions are valuable to the entire business dashboarding community.  

One Response to “KPI User Requirements for Dashboard Projects - Using the KPI Wheel, a Flex Dashboarding Tool”

1. Mike Sewmer Said on February 7th, 2008 at 12:10 am quote

   Pretty good dashboards..

   See also very nice dashboards here:

   http://perpetuumsoft.com/

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Last Modified: Friday, April 27th, 2007 @ 16:00

This business intelligence dashboard blog entry was posted on Thursday, March 30th, 2006 at 8:08 pm and is filed under Dashboard Screenshots. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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