Here's the lifecycle of most dashboards:
- Someone says "we need a dashboard"
- Someone spends two days building a beautiful dashboard with 30 charts
- Everyone looks at it once
- Nobody looks at it again
- Three months later someone asks "do we have a dashboard?" and the cycle repeats
The problem isn't the tool. The problem is that the dashboard doesn't answer questions anyone is actually asking.
A good dashboard does one thing: it tells you whether today is normal or not. Open it, glance at it, know if something needs attention. Close it. That's it.