Comments on: Dashboard Development and Unleashing Creative Juices http://www.gilliganondata.com/index.php/2009/07/09/dashboard-development-and-unleashing-creative-juice/ Thoughts, musings, and, hopefully, not too many redundancies on the world of business data. If you missed the irony in the previous sentence, you may struggle with my writing style. Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:26:03 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Tim Wilson http://www.gilliganondata.com/index.php/2009/07/09/dashboard-development-and-unleashing-creative-juice/comment-page-1/#comment-23868 Tim Wilson Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:03:40 +0000 http://www.gilliganondata.com/?p=417#comment-23868 David -- EXCELLENT point. The best visualization of the wrong metrics/performance measures is, probably, worse than poor visualization of the right metrics. Few really doesn't address *how* to get to the right metrics -- he throws down the gauntlet that a dashboard needs to be one page/screen, and he's the thought leader in how to go from a metric to the best visualization of it. Nailing both in tandem is key. Thanks for the David Parmenter link -- just added that to my feeds! And, yeah, I found the Goodman article via Few's blog as well! David — EXCELLENT point. The best visualization of the wrong metrics/performance measures is, probably, worse than poor visualization of the right metrics. Few really doesn’t address *how* to get to the right metrics — he throws down the gauntlet that a dashboard needs to be one page/screen, and he’s the thought leader in how to go from a metric to the best visualization of it.

Nailing both in tandem is key. Thanks for the David Parmenter link — just added that to my feeds!

And, yeah, I found the Goodman article via Few’s blog as well!

]]> By: David Gerbino http://www.gilliganondata.com/index.php/2009/07/09/dashboard-development-and-unleashing-creative-juice/comment-page-1/#comment-23851 David Gerbino Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:50:21 +0000 http://www.gilliganondata.com/?p=417#comment-23851 Tim, I read Ryan Goodman piece too. Stephen Few was good enough to let his community know about Ryan's piece. I was not going to comment but, your quote of Ryan, "Everyone has a creative side, but someone who has never picked up a design book with an emphasis on data visualization should not implement dashboards for their own company and certainly not as a consultant. Dashboard development is not the forum to unleash creative juices when the intent is to monitor business performance." is so true. However, the one element that tends to get overlooked when I hear or read about people discussing dashboards is the most important element - the measures. If you want to change performance, you need the right collection of measures. Quoting David Parmenter ( http://www.davidparmenter.com ), The Critical Success Factors determine the organizational health and vitality and where the organization needs to perform well. Key Result Indicators, Result Indicators, Performance Indicators, and Key Performance Indicators are the actual performance measures, which naturally cascade from these Critical Success Factors. The right measures coupled with the right data visualization tools truly creates a winning combination. @dmgerbino Tim, I read Ryan Goodman piece too. Stephen Few was good enough to let his community know about Ryan’s piece. I was not going to comment but, your quote of Ryan, “Everyone has a creative side, but someone who has never picked up a design book with an emphasis on data visualization should not implement dashboards for their own company and certainly not as a consultant. Dashboard development is not the forum to unleash creative juices when the intent is to monitor business performance.” is so true. However, the one element that tends to get overlooked when I hear or read about people discussing dashboards is the most important element – the measures. If you want to change performance, you need the right collection of measures. Quoting David Parmenter ( http://www.davidparmenter.com ), The Critical Success Factors determine the organizational health and vitality and where the organization needs to perform well. Key Result Indicators, Result Indicators, Performance Indicators, and Key Performance Indicators are the actual performance measures, which naturally cascade from these Critical Success Factors.

The right measures coupled with the right data visualization tools truly creates a winning combination.

@dmgerbino

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