· 1 min read
Executive-Ready Dashboards: Turning Delivery Data into Decisions
Dashboards should provoke action, not admiration. Build them like a cockpit, not a mural.
Executives do not need gradients and gauges; they need the shortest path from signal to decision. That is the job of a dashboard.
Problem: pretty, passive reporting
- Vanity metrics crowd out risk signals.
- No owners are named, so nothing moves.
- Lagging indicators hide the next collision.
Solution: cockpit rules
- Five dials max: Cost to complete, schedule slip, scope variance, risk exposure, and decision backlog. If you need more, make it a drill-down, not a main view.
- Owner-first design: Every alert shows the owner and the next irreversible date. If nobody is named, the metric is noise.
- Lead indicators: Include forecast accuracy, dependency readiness, and decision latency—not just burn.
Treat the dashboard as an operational contract: if a metric turns red, a predefined action triggers. Automation is optional; clarity is not.
Smart conclusions
- Review dashboards in the first 10 minutes of governance meetings, then spend the rest making decisions.
- Remove metrics that have not triggered a decision in 60 days.
- If an executive says “so what?” after seeing a chart, the dashboard failed its only job.
