Читать книгу Excel Dashboards & Reports For Dummies - Michael Alexander - Страница 15

Imagine that your manager asks you to create a dashboard that tells him everything he should know about monthly service subscriptions. Do you jump to action and slap together whatever comes to mind? Do you take a guess at what he wants to see and hope it’s useful? These questions sound ridiculous, but these types of situations happen more than you think. I’m continually called to create the next great reporting tool but am rarely provided the time to gather the true requirements for it. Between limited data and unrealistic deadlines, the end product often ends up being unused or having little value.

This brings me to one of the key steps in preparing for dashboarding: collecting user requirements.

In the non-IT world of the Excel analyst, user requirements are practically useless because of sudden changes in project scope, constantly changing priorities, and shifting deadlines. The gathering of user requirements is viewed to be a lot of work and a waste of valuable time in the ever-changing business environment. But as I mention at the start of this chapter, it’s time to get into the dashboard state of mind.

Consider how many times a manager has asked you for an analysis and then said “No, I meant this.” Or “Now that I see it, I realize I need this.” As frustrating as this can be for a single analysis, imagine running into it again and again during the creation of a complex dashboard with several data integration processes. The question is, would you rather spend your time on the front end gathering user requirements or spend time painstakingly redesigning the dashboard you’ll surely come to hate?

The process of gathering user requirements doesn’t have to be an overly complicated or formal one. Here are some simple things you can do to ensure you have a solid idea of the purpose of the dashboard.