Posts
KPI Report Design – Using Science to Improve Readability
Using brain science to design better reports and dashboards The challenge with dashboards is that we are trying to convey an insanely large amount of information in a very small space. A dashboard I built for a client a couple of years ago had nearly 2,000 pieces of information on an A3 sheet. To be…
Time to be be brutal….
Ditch measures that are not useful. Often measures are retained as they are “interesting”. If the measures are not useful, and used, consider ditching them.
30 Second Tip: Seek out pain
Measure things that are not in control. Organisations tend to shy away from this, as the message initially looks grim. If you are trying to improve things then it’s essential to measure the things that are not working properly.
Do not shoot the messenger
I have witnessed more debates about KPIs and measures than any human really should. They normally settle into a few clear families. We shouldn’t measure -insert controversial topic- because: It’s too hard/expensive to measure We tried that before and it didn’t work It doesn’t have a causal link with the thing that we are interested…
Measures, behaviour and the “Cobra Effect”
I learned something new yesterday. I heard about the “Cobra Effect”. When Britain ruled India there was a problem identified with the number of [venomous] cobra snakes in the country. The government decided to offer a reward for every dead cobra brought to the authorities. Initially it had the desired effect, reducing the number of…
When little report-production problems become a disaster
I’ve sat in a lot of MI (management information) departments over the years and have noticed a common theme. You can tell when there’s going to be highly visible (and embarrassing) failure in KPI and measure production well before the event. There’s a well established concept called Heinrich’s Accident Pyramid that asserts that a number near-miss events increase the probability of more…
Old news? When not to put data in a dashboard or report.
Some information can be essential to know on a second-by-second basis (heartrate, stock prices or altitude) other information is naturally slower to change; staff survey results, seasonal totals or audit results, for example. A quick way to devalue a dashboard or report and to turn off readers is to put data in the report that…
Dashboard? That’s just a posh name for a report, isn’t it?
I had an interesting conversation with a company lawyer a little while ago. We were discussing dashboards and she said “It makes me laugh when people talk about dashboards, it is just a posh way of describing a report!”. It made me think as it seems to be a common misconception. What is the difference between…
Real life measures: Measuring efficiency in offices
Who is this article for? This article is a fairly technical article aimed at people who are looking to measure the efficiency or productivity of teams in an office-based environment, want a guide on how to measure efficiency and the system options for doing this. Article facts: Word count: 1320 Approximate time to read:…
A plain English guide to OEE
OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness. It is a very commonly used efficiency measure. What do we mean by efficiency? Put simply, it is “How much did we make, compared with how much we could have made.” OEE splits our efficiency down into three categories. The idea here is that we can get some understanding…