Excel Dashboards

Requirement Gathering for dashboards:

 
 

1. Be sure what the dashboard is required for. Talk to the end users if that is needed
   
2. Don't fill up useless data, even if you have that!!
   
3. While gathering the user requirements use component questions rather than just a word to better understand the component that needs to be created. e.g.
   

   instead of simply adding the word "Revenue" into user requirements,
   

   write a component question, such as, "What is the overall
   

   revenue trend for the last two years?" I call it a component question because
   

   I intend to create a single component, such as a chart or a table, to answer
   

   the question.
   

   For instance, if the component question is, "What is the overall
   

   revenue trend for the last two years?," you can imagine a chart component
   

   answering that question by showing the two-year revenue trend.
   

    
    

    
    

4. Conventional wisdom says that the measures on your dashboard shouldn't
   

   be governed by the availability of data. Instead, you should let dashboard
   

   KPIs and measures govern the data sources in your organization
   

    
    

5. Data modeling is important when creating a dashboard, so that it take less manual labor to update the dashboard, every time the data changes
   
6. Create three layers in the data model: data layer, an analysis layer, and a presentation layer
   

   Data layer: Consists of Raw data
   

   Analysis layer: Contains formulas that pull data from the raw data layer based on formulas
   

   Presentation layer: To display the data in the dashboard format