This document discusses measuring and managing key metrics through dashboards. It provides guidelines for designing effective dashboards, including having clear and simple visualizations, focusing on the most important metrics, and using dashboards to answer questions and drive further inquiry. The document also cautions that not all measured metrics are truly important, and advocates for "measured measurement" to ensure the right things are being tracked.

1. Counting is Easy, Measuring is
Hard
MVP Jen Stirrup
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2. Sponsors Gold
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3. Sponsors Silver et Bronze
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4. What gets measured, gets managed.
 What can’t be measured, can’t be managed…
 Peter Drucker’s sentiment was more subtle
than that..
 Don’t assume what’s measured is what is
important
 Some things are measured that should not be
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5. What gets measured, gets managed.
 We need measured measurement
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6. Sabermetrics
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7. What is a Dashboard?
A visual display
of
the most important information needed
to achieve one or more objectives
that has been
consolidated on a single computer screen
so it can be
monitored and understood at a glance
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8. What do we actually want to do?
 Dispel myths and replace with the truth.
 Start addressing problems
 Answer real questions that generate further
questions
 Go straight to the truth.
 Energize: nobody gets excited about a page
of numbers in a meeting!
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9. What don’t we want to do?
 Let’s take a look….
• Go to Bing
• Type in Dashboards
• Go to Images
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10. Designing a dashboard
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11. Guidelines for good dashboards
 Two different objectives:
 Exploratory dashboards
 Presentation dashboards
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12. How do you know what chart to choose?
(Credit: Andrew Abela)
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13. How do you know what chart to choose?
(Credit: Andrew Abela)
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14. How do you make your chosen chart look
better?
• Have a clear background
• Make format gridlines disappear, or very light gray
• Legends identify series; Excel offers a number of
placements. However, legend is best moved inside the plot
area
• Chart templates
• Creating a Reporting Service Report Template – put your
template RDL here: C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio
9.0Common7IDEPrivateAssembliesProjectItemsReportProject
• Creating templates in Excel – custom chart styles can be
stored in XLUSRGAL.XLS which is in C:Documents and
Settings"user name"Application DataMicrosoftExcel
• Be careful setting this as a default chart! Setting scatterplot as a default
chart can prevent you producing Pivot Charts. If you use these often,
better to set Factor Plot as a default
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15. About the Data
 Primary completion rate, total (% of
relevant age group)

Mortality rate, under-5 (per 1,000 live
births)

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