Data is past information. So how does and how should it affect future decisions? Now, with data, we typically put it in dashboards to look at how we have improved, to look at performance, or at the team’s velocity, and how they’ve been keeping up with the work that is coming in. We want to compare it over quarters to see how we used the tool, user reports, their performance, and how they did the repair projects. Was it better compared to last quarter? Or did their performance fall?
Now, all of these are things we can track with dashboards. All of this is just performance we’re talking about. If we want to move into tracking output, the deliverables that we sent out, the number of clients acquired, the number of clients worked on, the number of projects compared to last quarter, the number of deliverables per project, and how fast these deliverables were delivered compared to previous quarters, retention rate for clients. For marketing, we want to look at how many ads we launched, how many campaigns, newsletters, landing pages, webinars, blog posts, and YouTube videos. All of these things are things we can track with dashboards.
Now, why and how should it affect your business? With dashboards, as I said, it’s past data. As much as it tells us what happened, it can always predict a bit of the future. Remember, things are always changing. So you have to watch your dashboards properly. If your team has been continuously delivering as they should, meeting these goals, there’s no reason for you to think that they will not meet these goals as long as the conditions surrounding them remain the same. How should dashboards guide you and why should you create them? Remember, when you start, there are certain goals you have in mind, and you want to track. Look at the work that you have done and measure it against the goals that you set.