Happy Birthday Hui…
Note: Hui’s birthday is yesterday (13th). I planned to write this post and share the dashboard workbook with you all yesterday itself, but my daughter wasn’t keeping well and we were busy taking care of her. (And yes, she is ok now, thanks for asking. 🙂 )
Some of you know our guest author and Excel ninja Hui. Yesterday was his birthday. And I wanted to create nice birthday gift for him. So I took a database dump of our forums data and created a dashboard.
First take a look the dashboard I made for him:
[click here for a large version]
Some Key Findings
- Our forums have a total of 5,227 posts, out of which Hui contributed 24% (roughly 1 in 4)
- On average Hui takes 13 and half hours to get back to the questioner with an answer. The fastest he has been was 31 seconds. (only last year data)
- Hui has been very busy on November 30th – 2010, answering 19 times on that day.
- The person who got benefited most from Hui is indi visual, with 44 replies from Hui.
- People used the words thank and Hui in same post 395 times.
- Hui wakes up early and answers questions on our forums. Then, before sleep, he spends some time helping people.
- If Hui had $2.5 per each letter he typed in our forums, he would be a millionaire.
- All data as of Jan 11, 2011. Between that and now, Hui has already answered 37 more times (and still helping…)
How is this dashboard constructed?
With lots of love of course. But quite a few excel techniques were used too.
- Structurally, this dashboard is similar to my 10,000 comment dashboard.
- Word cloud of Hui’s replies is from wordle.net
- Scrollable chart at the bottom is a grid of 20×42 cells conditionally formatted. Scrolling effect thru OFFSET formula.
- Pivot tables, a whole lot of them were used to find the summaries I want
- The header content is picture links & shapes.
- Rest of them are left to your imagination.
Download Excel Workbook with this Dashboard
Please click here to download the workbook. It is locked.
I have made a 45 minute video explaining how this dashboard is constructed. I will be giving this video & unlocked workbook as a bonus to people joining Excel School dashboard option or purchasing Dashboard training kit.
Interested in Dashboards?
- I recommend joining Excel School. You can learn how to make awesome charts & dashboards.
- Visit our Dashboards Page. It has tons of useful information, examples, tutorials & templates.
Say Happy Birthday & Thanks to Hui
I am sure directly or indirectly, Hui has helped many of you. So take a minute and say thanks to him. Wish him several more years of awesomeness, happiness, wealth & health. 🙂
18 Responses to “Best Charts to Compare Actual Values with Targets – What is your take?”
Great post. I can't vote, though, because the answer I want to put down is "it depends". As with all visualisations, you've got to take into account your audience, your purpose, technical skills, where it will be viewed, etc.
I'm with Andy: It depends. Some I would use, some I might use, some I won't touch with a barge pole.
Naturally I have comments 🙂
The dial gauge, though familiar, is less easy to read than a linear type of chart (thermometer or bullet). It's really no better than the traffic lights, because all it can really tell you is which category the point falls in: red, yellow, or green.
By the same token, pie charts are so familiar, people don't know they can't read them. Remember how long it takes kids to learn to read an analog clock?
Bullet charts don't show trends.
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or ine component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
[...] Best Charts to Compare Actual values with Targets (or Budgets … [...]
I voted for #6 even though I agree with the other comments that it depends.
The majority of the votes are for the #2, thermometer chart. I still have yet to understand what happens when you are above plan/goal, which was brought up in yesterday's post.
Also, I agree with Jon in that it would be better to flip the series and make the filled part the target or goal and the line or marker the actual.
I am also a fan of using text when appropriate if the data is among other metrics in a type of dashboard. Calling it out by saying actual and % achievement is a good option.
Another "it depends" vote. Are you just looking at one or are you comparing a number of targets with actuals? You didn't include a text box. The problem with sentences is that they can get lost in a page of gray text. A text box can call attention to the numbers and line them up effectively.
I'm with Jon: "Some I would use, some I might use, some I won’t touch with a barge pole" and I'm surprised that some of your readers voted for the last group.
Jon says:
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or line component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
Why does this make more sense? I like 6 the way it is, although I would use a heavy dash for the plan/target marker.
"It depends" is also my take. What I usually try to drill into my clients dashboard design is the fu ndamental difference between spot results (am I on target for this month) and long term trends.. I always try to create 3 different set of graphs to represent real perormance:
- spot results vs objectives
- cumulative results vs objectives
- long-term trend (moving average) mostly) to see where we're going
[...] Best Charts to Compare Actual Values with Targets – What is your take? (tags: excel charts) [...]
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Jon says:
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or line component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
Why does this make more sense? I like 6 the way it is, although I would use a heavy dash for the plan/target marker.
I totally agree, Bob. I would normally favour a line for the target and a column for the actual, you can see quite easily then which columns break through the line, then.
[...] best charts to compare actual values with targets — den Status mal anders zeigen, z. B. als Tacho [...]
Thermometer charts: "Not appropriate when actual values exceed targets" - this is easily solved by making the "mercury" portion a different color from the border, then you can clearly see where the expected range ends and the actual values keep going.
People seem to knock gauges quite a bit in dashboarding, but trying to show comparison of realtime data between operating sites and targets for each site can easily be done with a bank of gauges that have the optimal operating points at 12 o'clock.
The human eye is great at pattern stripping, and any deviation of a gauge from the expected 12 position will quickly register with an operator and attract his attention. Using a colour background, or meter edge, will also indicate the sensitivity of a particular site.
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I am wondering how will the plotting work, for some of the targets which may have been achieved before time. E.g. for the month of Jul the target was 226 and the actual was 219. So the chart will show a deficit in meeting the target by 7 points but what if this 7 may have been completed earlier in month of June. So ideally it not a deficit.