What are Powerful Dashboards?
In today’s data-driven world, creating impactful dashboards isn’t just a technical skill—it’s a critical way to drive business success. Dashboards serve as a bridge between raw data and decision-making, transforming numbers into meaningful insights that empower teams and organisations to take action. However, not all dashboards are created equal.
A truly Powerful Dashboard is one that:
- Delivers actionable insights: It doesn’t just present information—it enables better decisions.
- Drives measurable action: A good dashboard leads users to take clear, purposeful steps to solve problems or improve outcomes.
- Improves overall performance: By streamlining processes, spotting opportunities, and addressing challenges, dashboards can boost you, your team and your organisations effectiveness.
But what makes a dashboard Powerful? To create dashboards that succeed, they must meet what we call the 3 E’s:
- Easy to understand: Information should be clear and accessible to any user, regardless of their technical background.
- Easy to use: Dashboards should enable users to quickly navigate, filter, and interact with the data.
- Easy to build: While the outcome looks polished, the process to create these dashboards should be efficient and repeatable.
Through our experience of coaching and training teams, we’ve found that creating such dashboards is both an art and a science. It requires the right mindset, tools, and proven techniques to overcome the hurdles many people face. That’s where the Powerful Dashboards™️ Framework comes into play.
The 3 Biggest Barriers to Success
While dashboards are an essential tool for decision-making, many professionals encounter significant obstacles in their creation. These barriers often prevent you from achieving the full potential of your data and your dashboards, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. Let’s explore the three most common challenges:
- Design Concerns
Many individuals struggle with the fear that their dashboards aren’t good enough. It’s natural to compare one’s work to others—especially when surrounded by impressive dashboards produced by more experienced developers. This fear often leads to hesitation, with you doubting whether your designs meet the necessary standard or deliver the expected value.
Moreover, a lack of confidence in applying best practices and design principles can make the process daunting. Questions like “Is this clear enough?” or “Will this make sense to my audience?” or “is this the best way to visualise this data to answer that question?” can linger, creating anxiety and delaying progress. Addressing these design concerns is crucial to empower teams to deliver with assurance. - Information Overload
In an era where information is abundant, finding the right guidance can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. A simple internet search for “how to create dashboards” produces a sea of blogs, videos, and tutorials, all with varying levels of quality and relevance. While some resources might seem helpful, they often fall short of meeting the specific needs of a project.
The result? You lose precious time navigating through irrelevant material, heading down rabbit holes, and still feeling no closer to your goal. Without clear direction or structure, it’s easy to feel stuck and overwhelmed.
You don’t need perfection, but you do want confidence that you are doing the right thing. - Deadline Pressure
Time constraints are one of the biggest challenges in dashboard creation. These pressures manifest in two key ways:
– Limited learning time: Many professionals can only dedicate a small fraction of their time to learning Tableau or other tools. With other responsibilities and deadlines, there’s little room to master new skills.
– Urgent deliverables: In many cases, you are asked to produce dashboards or analysis at short notice. With no time to develop new skills, you can often fall back on familiar tools like Excel or PowerPoint, compromising the potential of your work.
These barriers are not insurmountable. By addressing these challenges head-on with the right framework, professionals can break through the roadblocks and create dashboards that truly make an impact.
The Powerful Dashboards Framework
1. Turbocharged Build
One of the biggest reasons dashboards stall, is a lack of clarity in the build process. Without a structured approach, it’s easy to waste time second-guessing choices or constantly modifying the design. The Turbocharged Build pillar provides a clear, repeatable process to streamline dashboard development.
- Define scope upfront: Before jumping into the build, you need to set clear boundaries. This avoids endless iterations and ensures your dashboard serves its intended purpose from the start.
- Leverage templates and frameworks: Instead of reinventing the wheel, using proven templates and design patterns helps you fast-track your work. This reduces uncertainty and accelerates development.
- Focus on efficiency without sacrificing quality: Speed is essential, but not at the expense of effectiveness. With the right approach, you can build dashboards quickly while maintaining a high standard.
2. Fast-Track Learning
Given the vast amount of available information, finding exactly what you need can be overwhelming. Instead of spending hours searching for the right resource, Fast-Track Learning focuses on targeted, need-to-know knowledge that aligns with your immediate goals.
- Learn only what’s necessary for the task at hand: Rather than trying to master everything at once, you should focus on acquiring the specific skills required for the dashboard you’re currently working on.
- Signposting to the right resources: Instead of sifting through endless blogs and tutorials, having clear, structured learning paths helps you get to the right answers faster.
- Bite-sized, modular learning: Breaking training into small, practical lessons ensures that you can immediately apply new knowledge without feeling overloaded.
3. Quality Confidence
Even after a dashboard is built, doubts can creep in. Will it work as users expect? Will users find it intuitive? Quality Confidence ensures that your dashboard isn’t just functional—it meets high standards and is truly useful to your audience.
- Apply best practices: Great dashboards follow established design and usability principles to ensure clarity, consistency, and effectiveness. Learning these in the context of delivering a specific dashboard becomes intuitive, and lessons become embedded in longer term memory as a result.
- Peer review and feedback loops: Getting input from others helps you refine your work and catch potential issues early. Giving feedback is also a great way to improve your own work.
- MVP rollout approach: Instead of waiting for a ‘perfect’ dashboard, releasing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) allows for real-world testing and iteration, looping back round to re-assessing user requirements and incorporating the dashboard requirements backlog.
By following this framework, you can navigate dashboard development with clarity and efficiency, avoiding the common pitfalls that often slow progress. The next step is to break this down further into a step-by-step process that guides you from concept to completion.
Step-by-Step Process: The Path to Powerful Dashboards
To build an effective dashboard, following a structured, step-by-step approach ensures clarity, efficiency, and quality. The Powerful Dashboards Framework is divided into three core phases:
1) Turbocharged Build
This phase is all about setting a strong foundation for your dashboard. By establishing a clear process, defining the scope, and using templates, you can accelerate development without sacrificing quality.
1.1) Proven Process
One of the biggest frustrations in dashboard creation is uncertainty—where to start, what steps to follow, and how to ensure a successful outcome. A proven process eliminates this uncertainty by providing a structured workflow.
- Follow a repeatable framework rather than relying on trial and error.
- Different approaches for different users—regular Tableau developers need a deeper process, while occasional users require a streamlined method.
- Clarity at every stage ensures you move forward with confidence rather than second-guessing decisions.
1.2) Scope Agreed
Scope creep is a major issue in dashboard projects. Without a well-defined scope, new requirements keep emerging, leading to frustration and delays.
- Set clear objectives before any development begins. This prevents unnecessary changes down the line.
- Use wireframing to visually map out the dashboard’s structure before building.
- Manage new requests effectively—document them in a backlog rather than immediately changing the dashboard’s scope.
1.3) Templates Selected
Rather than starting from scratch, leveraging pre-existing templates and best practices speeds up development and maintains consistency.
- Use tried-and-tested dashboard templates to accelerate progress.
- Identify knowledge gaps early—this allows for efficient learning before hitting roadblocks.
- Standardised design ensures consistency, making dashboards more intuitive for users.
2) Fast-Track Learning
Once the foundation is set, the next step is focusing on targeted learning. Rather than getting lost in endless resources, this phase ensures you acquire only the knowledge needed to build your dashboard successfully.
2.1) Data Ready
A great dashboard starts with well-prepared data. Ensuring that your data is clean, structured, and optimised for analysis saves time and prevents major issues later on.
- Prepare data sources properly—poorly structured data can cause unnecessary complications.
- Focus on efficient data connections to ensure performance and reliability.
- Understand how Tableau processes data to avoid slow dashboards and calculation issues.
2.2) Great Charts
A dashboard is only as good as the visualisations it presents. Selecting and designing the right charts ensures that insights are communicated effectively.
- Choose appropriate chart types that match the data’s story.
- Apply best practices for readability and engagement—avoid unnecessary clutter or complexity.
- Ensure consistency in styling to create a professional, polished look.
2.3) Interactive Dashboard
Dashboards should be dynamic and user-friendly, allowing users to explore data rather than just viewing static reports.
- Incorporate interactivity where needed, such as filters, drill-downs, and tooltips.
- Ensure responsiveness—the dashboard should function well across different devices and screen sizes.
- Prioritise user experience by testing interactivity to confirm it aligns with users’ needs.
3) Quality Confidence
The final stage ensures that your dashboard is not only complete but also high-quality, user-friendly, and ready for real-world use.
3.1) Best Practice Applied
Applying industry best practices ensures that your dashboard is effective, accessible, and visually appealing. Best practices will have been utilised during initial chart development, but can only be truly ensured when it all comes together.
- Follow visualisation best practices to maintain clarity and usability.
- Ensure accessibility for all users, considering colour contrast and readability.
- Optimise performance by using efficient calculations and avoiding unnecessary complexity.
3.2) Peer Reviewed
A fresh perspective can make all the difference. Peer reviews help catch mistakes, refine design, and ensure that the dashboard meets its objectives.
- Gather feedback from colleagues or stakeholders before finalising the dashboard.
- Encourage constructive criticism—insights from others often reveal blind spots.
- Learn from reviewing others’ work—assessing different dashboards improves your own design skills.
3.3) MVP Published
Rather than waiting for a ‘perfect’ version, launching a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) ensures that feedback is collected early and improvements can be made iteratively.
- Deliver the dashboard as soon as it’s usable, rather than delaying for perfection.
- Gather real-world user feedback to identify necessary refinements.
- Implement a rollout plan to ensure adoption, including training and support for users, and an efficient feedback loop.
By following this structured approach, you can confidently create dashboards that are powerful, insightful, and impactful while avoiding common pitfalls.
Final Takeaways & Next Steps
Creating Powerful Dashboards is not just about visual appeal—it’s about making data work for you. By following a structured, proven process, you can eliminate common frustrations, work efficiently, and deliver dashboards that truly drive action.
Key Takeaways
- A great dashboard follows a repeatable process. Relying on intuition or trial and error leads to inconsistencies and wasted time. Having a structured framework ensures efficiency and confidence.
- Scope control prevents dashboard chaos. Without a clear definition of what the dashboard should achieve, it’s easy to get caught in an endless loop of revisions. Setting boundaries ensures that you stay on track.
- Templates and best practices accelerate success. Leveraging existing designs and frameworks allows you to focus on insights rather than spending time reinventing layouts.
- Learning should be fast and focused. Instead of drowning in endless tutorials, targeted learning ensures that you acquire the right skills at the right time.
- Interactivity enhances user engagement. A static report limits impact, whereas an interactive dashboard empowers users to explore data on their own terms.
- Quality control is critical for credibility. A dashboard that looks impressive but delivers misleading or unclear insights can cause more harm than good. Applying best practices and gathering peer feedback ensures effectiveness.
- A dashboard is only useful if it is used. Rolling out a dashboard properly—through MVP launches, user feedback, and training—ensures that it delivers value instead of collecting dust.
What's Next?
If you’re ready to build Powerful Dashboards with speed, confidence, and clarity, it’s time to take action.
✅ Join our training and coaching program to fast-track your Tableau skills.
✅ Get expert guidance on structuring, designing, and optimising your dashboards.
✅ Start creating dashboards that make an impact instead of struggling with complexity.
Have a Centre of Excellence?
If you’d like our help in setting this process up in your company for you to deliver, get in contact with us quoting “TIC™️ CoE”
The right training and support can transform the way you work with data—so why struggle alone? Let’s make your dashboards powerful, insightful, and effective!
