Thursday, March 30

Overloaded with too much

The vehicle to deliver BI to the masses is a mixture between the right information, presented by the right tools. And this is based from the needs of users.

Sometimes when we provide more than what's needed, we end up giving less. Overloading what the vehicle should deliver, can bring your BI project to the brink of unsuccessfulness in the eyes of users.

"This is too complicated to learn." "Too many dimensions or metrics to grasp." "Too many tools. I don't know when to use which one." "I'm just more comfortable using my tabular reports and Excel."

The advantage of creating "just enough", can leave the feeling of wanting more. Deliver just enough functionality and information to users and they'll be more comfortable learning it and using what is delivered. Building in phases isn't just for the project team. And just building a BI system doesn't mean success.

The litmus test of success is found within the usage of a BI system.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In the year that has passed since this post, BI dashboards have matured in their usability and user interface design. Take a look at the 837 dashboard screenshots in this collection to see the range of dashboard UI approaches.