A dashboard where every number is correct and nobody can use it. Then sixty minutes on a file you have never seen, and a silent gallery walk where strangers read your work without you.
Day 3 of 3 09:00 – 15:00 Arabella Hotel
The day
The top rung. It is a practical question, not a theory: what do you put in front of somebody who has eleven minutes and was not in the room? The morning is dashboards, what one is actually for, which chart answers which claim, and why the title carries the finding. The afternoon is the capstone: a file nobody has seen, sixty minutes to clean it and build, then a cold read where the builders are not allowed to speak. You find out what your dashboard says to somebody who only has your dashboard.
Three concepts
Lunch is at 11:25 today, earlier than the other two days.
01
What a dashboard is for
Not a report of everything in the file. The smallest set of charts that answers one decision. Reports answer what happened; dashboards answer what do I do.
02
Which chart, and when
The chart follows the claim. Groups → sorted bar. Time → line. Two numbers → scatter. One number that matters on its own → no chart, say the number.
03
The title is where the finding goes
It is the only part of a chart everybody reads. If your title could sit on any chart in the file without changing, it is a label, not a title.
Run of show
A guide, not a script, timings flex to the room.
1
The dashboard nobody could use09:00
Four charts, four KPI cards, every number arithmetically correct, and not one of them says where to send the engineer on Monday.
2
What a dashboard is for09:20
Not a report of everything in the file: the smallest set of charts that answers one decision. Every chart answers exactly one question, or it goes.
3
Practice: write the question09:40
Not a critique. For each chart, the question it should have answered, and whether it does. One of the four survives.
Break10:05
5
Which chart, and when10:20
Five rows that cover almost everything anybody here will draw. Then sorting, and the three titles that turn a label into a finding.
6
Practice: eight claims10:55
Eight true claims, on your own, not in teams. Name the chart and write the title. Two of them separate the room.
Lunch, early today11:25
8
Capstone brief12:10
A new file, six branches, twelve months. Your reader has eleven minutes and was not in this room. Ten minutes on the brief, and not a minute more.
9
Capstone build12:20
Sixty minutes. Clean it first. Every team that skips that builds a wrong dashboard confidently. One branch looks fastest and is the slowest by thirty-five days.
Break13:20
11
Gallery walk, cold read13:30
Dashboards stay, their builders leave them. Green note: what it tells you. Orange note: the one thing you would change. The builders may not speak.
12
Fix pass14:10
Read your orange notes and make one change. One, not four. Then rewrite the title so the next green note is the one you meant.
13
Close: the whole ladder14:35
Four rungs, three days, named end to end, and the one line that held all of it.
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