CODED × KJO · Day 3

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From Analysis
to Recommendation

Day three of three. A file you have never seen, sixty minutes, and a dashboard a stranger can read while you stand there with your mouth shut.

Six hours · lunch at 11:25

Arabella Hotel

Bring your comparison card

Press → to begin

Callback · cards on the table, face up

Yesterday you built Knowledge.

A number, something beside it, the row count, and what it means. That card is the top of what most people ever get to, and it took you two days.

Here is the problem with it. It only works while you are standing next to it.

A real dashboard, from a real file, by a real tool

Every number on it is arithmetically correct.

Which chart tells you where to send the engineer on Monday?

Name the felt problem

Every number is right. Nobody can use it.

Those two facts live together comfortably, and that is the whole of today.

This is the same shape as Prompt A, on the first morning, one rung up. Prompt A gave you an answer that was not wrong and not useful. This gives you twenty numbers that are not wrong and not useful.

Point at the ladder

Wisdom is a practical question.

1 Data

2 Information

3 Knowledge

4 Wisdom

What do I put in front of somebody who has eleven minutes and was not in the room?

What you’ll walk out able to do

By three o’clock, here’s what changes.

Write the decision a dashboard is for, before you build any of it.

Pick the chart from the claim. Five rows cover almost everything you will draw.

Write a title that states the finding, not the axes.

Ship something a stranger can read without you, and survive their cold read.

The term

Not a report of everything. The smallest set of charts that answers one decision.

Reports answer

What happened.

Dashboards answer

What do I do.

Most things called dashboards are reports with a new layout.

THE MONDAY QUESTION The one decision the reader has to make. Before you build anything, write it down. If you cannot write it, you are not ready to build.

The rule that does the most work

Every chart answers exactly one question.

, If a chart answers no question, delete it.

, If it answers three, split it.

Deleting a chart is doing more work. Somebody has to decide it does not belong, and that somebody is you.

Back to the dashboard · what question does the vendor pie answer?

Thirteen slices for five real vendors.

Gulf Technical is on there three times. That is Day 1 showing up again. Nobody cleaned the vendor column, so the chart is wrong before you even ask whether it is useful.

The three failures. They come back in the gallery walk

Three ways a chart stops earning its place.

01

The chart with no question.It is there because the field existed.

02

The title that names a field.“Count of RequestID by Branch.” It describes the axes. It says nothing.

03

The unsorted comparison.Alphabetical bars, so the worst performer sits wherever the alphabet put it.

Practice · 25 minutes

Not a critique. The question each chart should have answered.

Block 03 · your turn

Two lines per chart. Then pick one.

For each of the four charts on screen, on page 2.

Workbook · page 2

Line 1: the question this chart should answer.
Line 2: does it? Yes or no, and one reason.
At the bottom: which of the four would you keep?

12:00

Timing flexes to the room. The clock is a guide, not a gate.

Fast finishers: write the one chart that is missing: the one that would answer the Monday question.

Unlock · take one chart per team, out loud

One chart out of four survives.

The chartThe question it should answerDoes it?

One chart survives, and it survives because time on the horizontal axis is hard to get wrong.

And notice what is missing

The strongest relationship in this file is the one thing this dashboard cannot show.

Satisfaction is on one chart and response time is on another. It was split across two pictures.

None of you could answer the Monday question at nine o’clock. Can you now say what chart would?

The decision rule, leave it up for the rest of the day

Five rows. That is the entire rule.

It covers almost everything anybody in this room will ever need to draw.

The two lines to defend, because somebody will argue

The chart follows the claim.

Pies

People read angles badly and read lengths well.A pie with more than four slices is a puzzle. A pie with thirteen is decoration. If you want composition, use a sorted bar chart and let people read lengths.

No chart

One number that matters on its own is a sentence, not a picture.A bar chart with one tall bar and five short ones is a sentence with decoration on it. Say the number in words and give it a size.

You do not pick a chart and then find something to put in it. That is how the vendor pie happened.

Demo · same data, same chart type, same tool

Sorting is the cheapest improvement available to you.

Alphabetical. The reader has to hunt for the finding.

Demo · the same chart, three titles

The title is where the finding goes.

Count of RequestID by Branch

Names the axes. The reader has to do the work.

It is the only part of a chart everybody reads.

If your title could sit on top of any chart in the file without changing, it is not a title. It is a label.

Where the rule breaks, and it does break

Rules with no exceptions are usually rules nobody has tested.

,

Priority is not a size order.Critical, High, Normal, Low. Sorting that by size is technically correct and practically confusing, because the business already has an order for those words. Use the business order and say why out loud.

1 Start bar chart axes at zero. A truncated axis makes a two percent difference look like a crisis. The most common way an honest chart lies.

2 Put the row count on the dashboard. You have been writing it down for two days. Now it goes where the reader can see it.

3 Color is for one thing at a time. If everything is highlighted, nothing is.

Yesterday’s card says the finding in words. What does today add?

Pause

Three questions before you pick eight charts.

What is still unclear?

Which chart do you over-use at work?

What would you push back on?

Practice · 30 minutes · on your own, not in teams

Eight claims. Every one true.

For each, name the chart you would draw and write the title you would give it.

Block 06 · your turn

Eight claims. Name the chart, write the title.

Every claim is true of the capstone file. Work from the five-row rule.

Workbook · page 4

The chart you would draw, for each of the eight.
The title you would give it. One that states the finding.
On page 4, on your own.

15:00

Timing flexes to the room. The clock is a guide, not a gate.

Fast finishers: go back and rewrite three of your titles so each one states the finding, not the subject.

Unlock · take them in order, fast, except 3 and 6

Eight claims, eight charts.

The chart follows the claim. Every one of these is true of the capstone file.

The three worth slowing down on

Where the room splits.

03

The relationship.“The longer a request waits, the lower the satisfaction score.” The only relationship in the set, and a bar chart cannot show it. Watch for people who drew average satisfaction by branch instead. That is a different claim, and it hides the pattern inside branch averages.

06

The number that needs no chart.“One request cost 96,000 KWD, seventy times the next highest.” People draw a bar chart with one tall bar. That is a picture of a sentence. Say the number.

08

The exception.Critical, High, Normal, Low is the business order, not size order. Name it as an exception out loud, so the rule survives.

The brief

New file. You have not seen it, and I have not told you what is in it.

capstone-service-requests.xlsx, service requests across six branches, twelve months.

Everything you have learned in three days applies, in order.

The brief

Your readerA branch operations manager. Has eleven minutes. Was not in this room.

Their decisionWhere to put the next engineer.

DeliverA dashboard of no more than four charts, and one sentence at the top saying what it means.

Every chartA title that states a finding · a sensible sort · a row count somewhere on the page.

Beside itYour change log. What you cleaned and why. Page 5 carries the check, the log, and the title sentence.

Clean it first. You will want to skip that and go to the charts. Every team that skips it builds a wrong dashboard confidently.

Block 09 · the capstone · struggle

Build it.

Sixty minutes in total. This clock runs the first forty. Then I stop the room, ready or not, because the gallery walk needs its time and it is the better lesson.

Workbook · page 5

Clean it first. Then build.
Four charts maximum. One sentence at the top.
The check, the log and the title sentence go on page 5.

40:00

Timing flexes to the room. The clock is a guide, not a gate.

Screens away

Hands up if your resolve-time numbers came out under two days for every branch.

How many rows did that use?

It is the same trap you met yesterday afternoon, in a file you have never seen, and it caught most of the room again.

That is not a failure. That is what makes it a habit rather than a memory. The check has to be automatic, because the file will never tell you it is needed.

The blank rates, by branch

164 requests have no resolved date.

Six branches within half a day of each other. Does that look like a finding to you?

The two traps in this file

Both of them are Day 1 and Day 2, in a new shape.

1

Industrial Branch looks like the fastest branch in the company.It is the slowest by thirty-five days. It closes its easy requests and leaves its slow ones open. That is where the engineer goes, and no team reaches it without checking the blanks.

2

SR-4885 is yesterday’s outlier, repeated.One ID used twice. A 120 KWD billing query and a 96,000 KWD generator failure. A team that removes duplicates by ID deletes the most expensive event in the file. Removing by whole row keeps it.

Block 09 · finish

Fix what the blanks changed. Get it onto one page.

Ten minutes.

Workbook · page 5

Fix what the blank resolved dates changed.
One page. Finished and readable beats perfect and unfinished, in ten minutes somebody who has never seen your file has to read it without you.
At two minutes left: write the title sentence if you have not. It is the part that gets skipped.

10:00

Timing flexes to the room. The clock is a guide, not a gate.

The gallery walk · the silence rule is the entire block

Dashboards stay. Their builders leave them.

Green note

What you think this dashboard is telling you. One sentence, in your own words.

Orange note

The one thing you would change.

The builders may not speak. Not to explain, not to correct, not to laugh. If you are standing at your own dashboard, you are standing in the wrong place.

Block 11 · walk

Three minutes per dashboard.

Call the moves out loud so nobody lingers. Watch for a builder drifting back to their own board, move them on without comment.

Workbook · page 6

A green note: what it is telling you.
An orange note: the one thing you would change.
Your own notes go on page 6 when you get back to your board.

25:00

Timing flexes to the room. The clock is a guide, not a gate.

Read your own · this is the moment of the day

Read the green notes. Is that what you meant?

Name it

Nobody misread your dashboard. They read it exactly as it is built.

The gap between the green note and what you meant is the gap between your understanding and your delivery. It is the only part of this job the tool cannot do for you.

Fix pass · 25 minutes · run it standing if the room is flat

One change. One, not four.

Block 12 · your turn

Read your orange notes. Make one change.

Then rewrite your title sentence so that the green note somebody writes next time is the one you meant.

Workbook · page 7

One change. Not four.
Old title and new title both go on page 7.
Stuck? Which orange note came up more than once? Start there.

15:00

Timing flexes to the room. The clock is a guide, not a gate.

Fast finishers: delete a chart. Tell me which one earned its place least.

Pin the new title · two lines each, no commentary

Almost every one of those got shorter and more specific.

That is what happened to your prompts on Monday afternoon, and it is what happened to your findings yesterday. The pattern has been the same for three days, in three different places.

Close · point at each rung and name what they did on it

Four rungs. Three days.

Four rungs, three days, and what you did on each one.

Point back at the bad dashboard, still on screen from this morning

That was where you started today. Every number correct. Nobody able to use it.

And it is not far from where a lot of the room started on Monday.

The spine

One line held all three days.

The prompt is the product.

M

Monday. Same file, two prompts, two different dashboards.

T

Tuesday. Three lines added to a question, and a hidden trap became visible.

W

Today. Same charts, different titles, and one of them a stranger could read.

The work was never in the tool. It was in what you asked it for, and how precisely you asked. That does not change when the models change, and they will change.

The honest limit, say it plainly

Three days does not make you a data analyst. It makes you someone who can no longer be handed a number and be quiet about it.

That is worth more than it sounds.

What happens next

Three things go back to work with you.

1 The five-part prompt sheet. Use it Sunday morning on something real.

2 The row count habit. Ask for it every time, not on the hard ones.

3 The Monday question. Before you build anything, write down the decision it is for.

Take your change log, your comparison card, and your dashboard. Those are yours, and they are evidence.

From Analysisto Recommendation

Yesterday you built Knowledge.

Every number on it is arithmetically correct.

Every number is right. Nobody can use it.

Wisdom is a practical question.

By three o’clock, here’s what changes.

Not a report of everything. The smallest set of charts that answers one decision.

Every chart answers exactly one question.

Thirteen slices for five real vendors.

Three ways a chart stops earning its place.

Not a critique. The question each chart should have answered.

Two lines per chart. Then pick one.

One chart out of four survives.

The strongest relationship in this file is the one thing this dashboard cannot show.

Five rows. That is the entire rule.

The chart follows the claim.

Sorting is the cheapest improvement available to you.

The title is where the finding goes.

Rules with no exceptions are usually rules nobody has tested.

Three questions before you pick eight charts.

Eight claims. Every one true.

Eight claims. Name the chart, write the title.

Eight claims, eight charts.

Where the room splits.

New file. You have not seen it, and I have not told you what is in it.

Build it.

164 requests have no resolved date.

Both of them are Day 1 and Day 2, in a new shape.

Fix what the blanks changed. Get it onto one page.

Dashboards stay. Their builders leave them.

Three minutes per dashboard.

Read the green notes. Is that what you meant?

Nobody misread your dashboard. They read it exactly as it is built.

One change. One, not four.

Read your orange notes. Make one change.

Almost every one of those got shorter and more specific.

Four rungs. Three days.

That was where you started today. Every number correct. Nobody able to use it.

One line held all three days.

Three days does not make you a data analyst. It makes you someone who can no longer be handed a number and be quiet about it.

Three things go back to work with you.

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