The dashboard, a CIO's #1 asset

You can only improve what you measure! Indicators reflect this.

A performance indicator is the information needed to drive action towards an objective. You can build your own indicators according to your own objectives: this is the essence of the dashboard.

Nowadays, almost every manager uses or contributes to the implementation of a dashboard. But what are the real best practices for getting a dashboard really useful and used?

The tool ranges from a simple reporting tool to a true strategy key... and, in addition to enabling a more or less in-depth analysis of performance and objectives, it can help identify the strengths and weaknesses of an organization or process, as well as take corrective action to improve decision-making or a roadmap.

That's why it's essential to master the art of the dashboard.

What are the basic rules for creating a useful dashboard?

What's THE #1 rule that Thierry Gasnier, Transition CIO and lecturer in the " CIO Executive Certificate " course offered by Infortive Transition, in partnership with Centrale-Supélec Exed, gives us? For him, rule #1 is that it's essential toadapt the format and wording of the dashboard to the end-user. We too often forget that a dashboard is first and foremost a tool around which to communicate!

How do I create a dashboard?

Yes, the dashboard is much more than a management tool for performance, as Thierry Gasnier reminds us:

"The objective of a dashboard is communication: WITH management, ComEx, the client, etc., and/or BETWEEN project stakeholders: team, supplier, service provider, etc."

So, we need to proceed in an iterative way, and not skip the draft stage: a succinct, evolving dashboard, to be worked on with the reader AND the user, so that the objectives are clear and unambiguous. Both format and vocabulary need to be adapted for the end-user. Of course, it's a job of co-construction, since the end-user doesn't always know exactly what all the objectives and uses of the dashboard he's asking the IT Department to create are. Thierry Gasnier also testifies that he has often seen teams create dashboards without ever having spoken to the end-users, which is a real shame...

It's important to remember to keep things simple and sober, to favor iconography rather than indigestible tables, not to overload on color, and toget straight to the point.

Above all, you need to keep up the pace, disseminating data and KPI readings over time. It's better to monitor 2 KPIs on a regular basis than 10 and not be able to keep up with their updating.

There's no such thing as a standard dashboard!

It's not a method, it's a tool we make to "explain something", according to a context. Each dashboard is adapted to the company's or project's approach.

Which dashboards are useful in an IT department?

The IS is an increasingly essential support for implementing the corporate strategy defined by the CEO. The CIO is polymorphous - at once a strategist, a technical expert and a functional expert - and he or she manages a resource center. He must therefore understand and translate what his management expects, what the businesses are sensitive to, and so on. The dashboard is one of the best tools he or she can use to be at one with the company, provided he or sheengages in dialogue with the men and women who run it.

For Thierry Gasnier, CIO dashboards are a way of highlighting the positives and explaining the negatives - of a company, a project, a strategy, a purchase.... To do this, the CIO needs to listen to the needs of his or her interlocutors: what performance is important to them (cost, lead time, price...), what are the judging criteria (throughput, permanence, functionality...), etc.?

Dashboards, customized from one department to another, are, remember, designed for those who use them, not those who create them, and so must not be set in stone.

In the end, if we were to make a dashboard of the ideal dashboard, what are the good KPIs of a dashboard? 🙃

• be constantly used by hierarchies and teams
• be consulted (as an introduction to CIO meetings, for example)
• be used as a basis for reporting and communication with the DG or users.

Critical indicators can be displayed. They can be of 3 types:

• Factual indicators
• Perception indicators (surveys, comparisons, etc.)
• Trend indicators (the previous two analyzed over time).

What are the IT Department's own performance indicators?

ISD performance has two components:

• efficiency: achieving objectives
• efficiency: saving resources

The IT department can therefore contribute to value through tangible and quantitative financial measures and on the quality of products/services provided, traceability, delivery, deadlines... The performance of the IT department itself can concern: meeting deadlines, response time, costs, the quality of its services, its level of resilience, integrity...

An IT department's dashboards must be representative of the different dimensions of the IT function within the company (strategic, operational, financial, human/skills, organizational, etc.).

Dashboards: a genuine corporate project

Communication is essential to understanding and being understood.

Implementing dashboards is a real corporate project, and must be designed as such with the right partners, sufficient resources and a continuous improvement approach.

But there's no question of disempowering the client. By making the effort to understand the challenges facing a department, the IT department provides it with the means to move in the right direction... autonomously. This autonomy, which businesses (often) claim and CIOs (sometimes) fear, can be controlled by the dashboard, which is both a management and governance tool, enabling transparency.

What needs to be analyzed in an IS department?

• Company results
  • Meeting customer expectations
  • Process performance
  • Internal skills and ability to anticipate (technical know-how, behavioral know-how and business know-how)
• The IT department itself
  • IT means and resources
  • Data processing, storage and sharing

What tools can be used to analyze IT department performance?

• Monitoring and reporting
• Management tools for steering :
  • Managing: steering, communicating, empowering
  • Control: measure
  • Anticipating trends and areas for improvement
• Governance tools to inform

Non-exhaustive list of IT Department performance indicators

• Availability rate of IT systems
• Average incident response time
• Average incident resolution time
• User satisfaction rate
• Total cost of ownership of IT systems
• Percentage of incidents resolved on time
• Percentage of requests satisfied within the allotted timeframe
• Average number of incidents resolved per day
• Number of problems solved by IT staff
• Number of new IT applications deployed
• Number of new computer system updates
• Data security rate
• Regulatory compliance rate...

Good dashboard practices in a nutshell

• Avoid overloaded dashboards
• Adapt vocabulary and measures to the recipient's profile
• Avoid acronyms, unless they are shared with all readers
• Recall units of measurement
• Use colors to enhance the look, but avoid the "Christmas tree" effect
• Automate updates
• Avoid manual data entry
• Stabilize formats and units, unless all stakeholders decide to change them
• A dashboard must stand on its own
• Start "modestly" and develop the dashboard according to the maturity of stakeholders (administrators and recipients).
• Strict adherence to publication deadlines