Before You Build a Dashboard, Decide What Management Should Actually Manage.
A dashboard is an answer. If nobody can state the question, the dashboard will not save them.
Power BI did not cause management blindness. It just made it expensive.
Dashboards are downstream
A dashboard exists to support a recurring decision. If you cannot describe the decision — who makes it, how often, with what threshold — you do not need a dashboard. You need a meeting and a one-page operating model.
Build the meeting first. The dashboard is the artefact the meeting needs.
The minimum that has to exist
- A named decision-maker.
- A cadence — weekly, monthly, quarterly.
- A threshold that triggers action.
- A clear next step when the threshold is breached.
Now you know what to put on the dashboard. Not before.
Written by Kristóf Frey
Kristóf Frey works with teams on delivery rescue, Product Ownership, business analysis, and practical digital operations. He writes about making work visible enough to manage.
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