Things You'll Need

Instructions

1

Interview each of the managers to determine their business goals and objectives. Find ways to measure each objective, define the acceptable range of each measurement and determine conditions that raise alarms. Some of these measurement's will come from inside the company, others will be external like economic indicators and stock market indices.
2

Create a list of the measurements and indicators described by the managers. Determine how the data can be gathered in real time without impacting database performance.
3

Choose the platform to host the data. A website makes a better choice when many of the managers spend time off-site. A desktop program or widget-based presentation is better when managers access their data inside the office. There are a variety of toolkits and add-ins designed to create dashboard displays. Choose the toolkit that fits best with the platform and programming languages currently in use.
4

Create a framework that allows each manager to choose the gauges and controls they need. Provide setup and preference dialogs that allow them to choose a variety of measurements, effective ranges, type of controls and sequence. Drag and drop will make this easier.
5

Create the queries or web service calls that gather the data to drive each gauge or indicator. Determine how often each query will be run, then create timers to trigger the queries. For external data, find web services that collect the data.
6

Test the dashboards. Let each manager set up their dashboard and make sure that the information is presented effectively and accurately. Tune the queries and adjust the presentation as needed.
7

Deploy the dashboards to all managers, then monitor their usage and effectiveness over time. Continue to tune and enhance, adding new controls as needed. Periodically interview the managers to make sure that the information is still effective. Requirements change over time and the measures used when the dashboards were designed may not be useful a year later.