Dashboards

Event Report

On Thursday, 1st March 2007 at the BCS Centre, London, members of BCS PROMS-G and their guests, were treated to a presentation by Tina Cousins of IBM, about the use of Dashboards to report and control projects and programmes, together with how the dovetail with Scorecards.

Tina Cousins, who is a Project Manager for IBM UK, Global Business Services, gave a very entertaining and visually stimulating walk-through of how Dashboards provide benefits within both small and large projects, and also in strategic multi-project programme environments. She showed us how a Dashboard for a project was similar to that for a car. They can be very simply for a small project (or a basic car) or very sophisticated for a multi-project programme (or a sports or luxury car).

Tina demystified Dashboards and demonstrated how they relate to Scorecards. Dashboards in concert with the Scorecard turn strategic alignment and accountability into action. Dashboards enable decision makers to rapidly gain insight, effectively evaluate a situation, and quickly respond. By integrating data from a variety of sources, dashboards provide a unified display of relevant and in-context information for informed decision-making. To encourage and facilitate action, dashboards are directly linked to objectives and initiatives in the scorecard.

She concluded by stating that dashboards can be used in many ways, there is the technical view, programme management view and a business view. Dashboards and Scorecards together represent the whole picture of a programme and therefore Dashboards can be seen to be a valuable tool at whatever level they are deployed.

The slides from this event are available for download (820Kb)