ExcelDashboardWidgets

[DaveP]

We’ve been playing around with a few dashboard designs in our office but I have to say we are still trying to figure this out and would appreciate any experience other organizations may have. What we have learned so far is that it helps to map out all of the users in the office, what are their levels of decision making and what is a particular user’s main reason for visiting the dashboard? Is the user making a decision or reacting to specific events or situations? What triggers a user’s visiting the dashboard? Is there some information the user would routinely review at the start of a work day for example? Or would they visit once a week or several times a day? Would a user go to the dashboard in response to something? What critical decisions do each of the users have to make? Do we need to set up some special conditions where users need to be alerted if a parameter becomes critical? For example, an industrial control dashboard might alert the user that a critical parameter is out of range (similar to the gas gauge or engine-temperature gauge on a car’s dashboard). Good luck playing around with your organization’s dashboard.

[MoNdiaye]

I hope that my answer is relevant to your question.
I work as a PM for many clients and most of the time what board member really need to see is a snapshot of how well (or badly) is the project, programme or portfolio doing.
Therefore what my dashboard really need to show (for their perspective) the current risk level, the number of issues (including level of criticality or heat map, age and mitigating actions), actions (open vs closed, age and dependencies) and not to forget the most important part: Finances!.
In one sentence, they want to see what is going on? What is working fine? What is wrong? What are we intending to do or doing about it? Are we within our means?
I hope this gives you an idea into the PM use of Excel.