6.1Turning Raw Data into Decisions

A quality dashboard is not a decoration. It is a decision-support tool. A well-designed dashboard answers the question "What should we do?" within seconds of glancing at it. A poorly designed dashboard generates a second question: "What does this mean?" -- and then gets ignored.

This section covers how to build dashboards for different audiences, choose the right tools and visualizations, and automate data collection so the dashboard stays current without manual effort.