The Consumer Driven Method for Effective Dashboard Development

Thanks again to Ahmad Chamy for sharing his knowledge and insights this week. This is the final installment of his series on effectively communicating data. Check out the emails from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday​

I'll be back on Monday. Have a great weekend.

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In the past, analysts developed dashboards following the waterfall project management methodology. A stage can only start once the prior stage has been completed and each stage is generally not revisited once it is complete. Given the impact that data can have on people and an organization, the lack of feedback and inflexibility to change makes the waterfall methodology less than ideal for data projects that involve an end user interface.

An agile or iterative approach works far better for dashboard development projects. A tried-and-true agile method is to decompose large dashboards into stand-alone reports that can be deployed as working components of the larger dashboard.

Why is this method so important?

• Deliver Small Wins: Clients shouldn’t wait to the end to provide feedback. This allows for the development team to pivot in their work as feedback loops occur.

• Feedback is Key: Clients want to feel like their needs are being heard. Leveraging the agile methodology creates opportunities for them to have visibility into the development process and offer crucial feedback along the way.

• Development silos lead to dashboard disasters: Often, what developers hear from the clients vs. what they build are two fundamentally different things. Rather than arriving at the destination and realizing that you were off mark, seek feedback along the way and incrementally pivot.

By looking at a dashboard as a series of sub-reports, we can incrementally develop them sprint by sprint. Each report would follow a sequential process as seen below. But the dashboard at large will be made up of a series of sprints.

Thanks for your reading this week,

Ahmad,

for The Data Shop