Dos and Don'ts of Dashboard Design
Like so many other enterprise systems - ERP, for example - the technology is the (relatively) easy part of a dashboard project. Verizon's is based entirely upon HTTP, and uses software agents to gather information from the many systems around the company (billing, for example, or phone line provisioning) and to bring it to a central server where a master agent parses the data into tables. Agents on each employee's PC are configured to ask the server for the data that matters to them.
Then it was time to tackle the organizational design. In a decision that probably saved the project, Kheradpir did not try to gather consensus about metrics before rolling out the dashboard. The first dozen or so metrics he handed to Babbio were based on Kheradpir's knowledge of the business and his own hunches about what he thought Babbio might want. He also decided not to give the metrics to anyone else at first. "With things that are change-oriented, you just have to get people started and then keep working it," says Kheradpir. Babbio immediately ordered up other metrics and asked Kheradpir to tweak some of the ones he started with.
But that first version Kheradpir gave to Babbio and other top executives had a fatal flaw: It required effort. The executives had to log in and search for the metrics they wanted; usage quickly fell off. Kheradpir began to fear that his dashboard dream would share the fate of all the others before it.
Then he had a simple but powerful epiphany. Initially, "people had to click and click to get where they wanted", he recalls. "And pretty quickly, I saw that they were too busy, and they just weren't going to do it. So we did a design that was autonomous. It was in their face; they couldn't ignore it." Instead of having to find metrics, the metrics would come to them - automatically, constantly.
And that's when things took off, in late 2002, says Kheradpir. The dashboard collection worked its way down into the organization, as executives (who had it) called subordinates (who didn't) to complain about metrics that the responsible parties couldn't see. Kheradpir started getting calls from all over Verizon. Some were curious; others were angry.
"People asked: 'Why are you doing these measurements, and why are you publishing them to the president?'," recalls Kheradpir. "And that gives you an opportunity to open up a dialogue. Maybe they don't like the measurements or they think they are being interpreted incorrectly. So I would say, OK, how would you do it? And they'd say: 'Well, you'd better talk to X about that.' And I'd say, Great, he's on the team." Kheradpir recruited affected businesspeople to help create or modify their own metrics for the system, which is maintained by a small IT team.
But as usage spread exponentially, so did the number of metrics. The dashboard server now contains over 300 different metrics about Verizon's business, each of which can be drilled into for more detail - much more than anyone could ever hope to read, much less interpret. Kheradpir's solution is to have business unit chiefs pick the metrics that matter most to them and their line managers, and dole them out, giving managers access to only the metrics that their supervisors (and Verizon's legal department) deem necessary. And the community that sees the metrics is limited; 300 to 400 managers is a small percentage of Verizon's 200,000 total employees.
In a sense, it's the traditional hierarchy of information reborn in an Internet skin. But Kheradpir says lower-level managers get to learn much more about the business than they used to, and they can appeal and request a different mix of metrics if they feel short-changed or overwhelmed.
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