13 Keys to Success: Gathering Dashboard & Reporting Requirements

Posted on By SivaKrishna Marri

When gathering requirements for a dashboard, it’s important to understand the goals, audience, and key metrics that the dashboard should showcase. To help guide the conversation and ensure that all important aspects are covered, you can ask the following questions:

So what’s the best dashboard in Power BI? Or in Tableau, or in Qlik Or CRM Analytics?

It’s the one that answers your reader’s question, quite simply.

And the one that does it as instantly as possible.

And the one that can change its answer as the user thinks of changes to the question.

Depending on how technical the person taking requirements is, they may fall into the trap of focusing all their attention on the data required to create a particular analysis needed on a dashboard. Or an analyst with a particularly good eye could obsess over what style of visualization does the job. A tree map? A scatter plot or a donut? Where does the report developer seek to impress?

And to impress is certainly a goal, but it’s too easy to lose sight of the #1 criteria of a successful dashboard: Does it answer the question?

  1. What is the purpose of the dashboard?
  2. Who is the target audience for the dashboard?
  3. What specific data or KPIs (key performance indicators) should the dashboard display?
  4. How should the data be visualized (e.g. bar charts, line graphs, pie charts)?
  5. What level of detail is needed for each metric (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly)?
  6. How should the dashboard handle missing or unavailable data?
  7. How frequently should the dashboard be updated?
  8. What is the desired format for the dashboard (e.g. web-based, interactive, mobile-friendly)?
  9. Are there any existing dashboards or reports that should be used as a reference or starting point?
  10. Are there any security or privacy concerns for the data displayed in the dashboard?
  11. How will the dashboard be used (e.g. for presentations, monitoring, and decision-making)?
  12. Are there any specific design or branding requirements for the dashboard?
  13. What is the timeline for delivering the dashboard?

These questions should help you get a good understanding of what the client is looking for in a dashboard and ensure that you are able to deliver a solution that meets their needs.