Turn a Spreadsheet Into a Dashboard
Take data you already have and build a dashboard that answers a specific question. The discipline is deciding the question first, because a dashboard without one is just charts.
Why this one
Most dashboards show what is easy to plot. The useful ones answer a question someone actually asks on a Monday morning. This project starts from that question and works backwards to the charts.
Steps
Write the question on one line
"Are we selling more than last month?" is a question. "Sales overview" is not. If you cannot phrase it as something with a yes-or-no or a number for an answer, keep rewriting until you can — everything downstream depends on this line.
Identify the three numbers that answer it
Ask which three figures, seen together, would answer your question, and what each one on its own would mislead you about. That second half matters: a revenue figure with no returns figure beside it flatters every month.
Choose chart types on purpose
Comparison across categories is bars. Change over time is a line. Composition of a whole is a pie, and only when there are fewer than six slices. Ask the model to justify each choice against your question and reject any answer that amounts to "it looks good".
Build it from a dashboard template
Start from a dashboard template and replace its data with yours. Getting your real numbers on screen early is what exposes the problems — a metric that made sense in a spreadsheet often turns out to be unreadable as a single large figure.
Test it on someone else
Show it to a person who was not involved and ask them to answer your original question from the screen alone. If they hesitate, the layout is wrong. Fix the layout, not the person.
You should end up with
A working dashboard that answers one specific question.
Done when
- The question is written down and answerable from the screen
- Every chart type is justified by what it is comparing
- Someone else can answer the question without help
If you want to go further
- Add the one number that would contradict your headline metric
- Build a second view for a different audience — an exec sees different things than an analyst