Reflection – Learning Launch

KPIs Dashboard

Challenge

As Head of the data analytics team at my organization, my challenge is to create a new dashboard  of KPIs for all internal customers, including employees and stakeholders, in order to improve  organization’s performance and decision-making. The task must me done within the next three  months, using internal IT infrastructure and we must follow operations team guidelines in terms of  strategy and procedures.

Another difficulty is that it will the first time for the organization to share all KPIs outside top  management team, so we need to make a clear and universal dashboard which could be  understood for all organization members.

Selection

IT team has shown us the tools to create the dashboard. We have picked one that have been used  for all members but with another purposes. We also have prepared one section with storytelling  that will support the strategy. We are ready to use the learning launch tool to test the first section  of the dashboard and see if it is suitable or not for our objective.

Application

We have had three learning launch sessions. The first one was focused on testing the acceptance  of the IT tool to selected members of different teams within the organization. It took several days  because we had limitations with operations guidelines. We could not put together all people at  the same time in the same place. Nonetheless, it was useful to accept our hypothesis that the tool  was known by all members, and it was easy to use it.

The second learning launch session was focused on presenting KPIs in the tool and test if the  visualizations capture the KPIs correctly and if each KPI was understood by their owner areas. It  was accepted by most organization areas, specially by top management. We got clarity about the  type of visualizations that were easily understood and the ones that not. We prepared a manual to  define the type of visualizations that will be used related to each KPI.

By the last learning launch session, we test if the storytelling was understood by all organization  members, specially for those that do not know all organization KPIs an how they were related with  their work. That was the hardest session, because we realize that there was not a good reception  to our storytelling. That gave us the guideline to redo the storytelling according to the comments  we received during the session.

Insight

The Data Analytics team discovered many things from the learning launch tool. First, we realize  that using the most known IT tool by organization members was a good idea. Second, although we  tested it with a few members of the organization, it was difficult to gather them in one place at  the same time, so it took more time as we planned. Therefore, we decided to separate the  following sessions by time and area.

Second, we learnt that storytelling should be differentiated according to the area, because it  makes more sense to analyze organizations performance from each area point of view, and not in  a general manner, as top management usually do it.

The learning launch tool gave us the opportunity to test our assumptions and to improve the  dashboard from the point of view of our internal customers, and not only as we think it should be.

Approach

In this specific situation, we think that the learning launch tool was the best option to test our  project. We had the chance to hear comments directly from our customers and see their  reactions. This will give us the opportunity to improve the first section of our dashboard and  create all other sections using the same tool but preparing the best visualizations and storytelling.

Additionally, we have now a manual that relates specific visualizations with KPIs, and how it  improves user experience.

