Tips on Creating a Great Dashboard

Every PM needs a unified reporting dashboard that summarizes the health of their product.

Why?

- It saves time in reviewing stats daily & allows for quicker cross-matching.

- It provides stakeholders real-time access to progress on OKRs without pinging you.

- it's powerful in creating alignment with leadership during business reviews.

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Some tips when creating such a dash:

1. Use a tool that hooks into all your data sources like sheets, analytics, CRM etc. I personally use Google Data Studio which is pretty easy to setup.

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2. Learn the purpose behind each visualization type. Using the right visual for the job can make recognizing trends/anomalies so much easier.

E.g. Use a line chart for time-driven trends, bar chart for categories, tables for leader boards, pie charts for items with a few values.

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3. Invest time early on to ensure the report scales. As you add more values, update records, create more categories etc., your dashboard should consume that without re-configuration.

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5. Always conduct a sanity check through random sampling.

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6. Reporting widgets should match the laid out OKRs & product north stars. Avoid bloat & vanity metrics. Too many dials spoil it.

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7. Always think about segmentation. Aggregates are insufficient (& often misleading).

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