6 Best charts to show % progress against goal
Back when I was working as a project lead, everyday my project manager would ask me the same question.
“Chandoo, whats the progress?”
He was so punctual about it, even on days when our coffee machine wasn’t working.
As you can see, tracking progress is an obsession we all have. At this very moment, if you pay close attention, you can hear mouse clicks of thousands of analysts and managers all over the world making project progress charts.
So today, lets talk about best charts to show % progress against a goal.
Using IRR with Data Tables – Modeling Cash-flow Scenarios in Excel
Do you want to simulate multiple cash-flow scenarios and calculate the rate of return? Then this article is for you. In this page, learn how to,
- Introduction to IRR & XIRR functions
- Calculate rate of return from a set of cash-flows with XIRR
- Simulating purchase or terminal value changes with data tables
- Apply conditional formatting to visualize the outputs
- Common issues and challenges faced when using XIRR
Joyplot in Excel
Over on Twitter, I came across this beautiful chart, aptly titled – Joyplot. It is the kind of chart that makes you all curious and awed. So I did what any Excel nerd would do. Recreated it in Excel of course. This post takes you thru the process.
Take a look at final outcome above. Read on to learn more.
Analyzing half a million complaints – Customer Satisfaction Scorecard [Part 3 of 3]
This is the final part of our series on how to analyze half a million customer complaints. Click below links to read part 1 & 2.
- Complaint reason analysis – Part 1
- Regional trends & analysis – Part 2
Customer satisfaction scorecard
In the previous parts of this case study, we understood what kind of complaints were made and where they came from (states). For the customer satisfaction scorecard, let’s focus on individual companies.
Analyzing half a million consumer complaints [Part 1 of 3]
How would you analyze data when you have lots of it? That is the inspiration for this series.
Let’s meet our data – Finance Industry Consumer Complaints
As part of open data initiatives, US government & Consumer Financial Protection Bureau maintain a list of all consumer complaints made against financial institutions (banks, credit unions etc.) You can download this data from the catalog page here. I have obtained the data on 1st of February, 2016. The download has 513,824 records. Each row contains one complaint.
In this and next two parts of the series, we are going to analyze these half a million complaints to find insights.
Thank you Sachin [a small tribute]
Lets talk about people who inspire us. People who show us that anything is possible. People who prove that commitment, hard work and perseverance are true ingredients of a genius.
I am talking about Sachin Tendulkar. Those of you who never heard his name, he is the most prolific cricketer in the world. He is the leading scorer in both tests (15,921 runs) and one day matches (18,426 runs). Read more about him here.
Tendulkar has been an inspiration for me (and millions of others around the world) since I was a kid. The amount of dedication & excellence he has shown constantly motivates me. It is a pity that the great man is retiring from test cricket. He is playing his last test match (200th, most by any person) as I am writing this.
So as a small tribute, I have decided do something for him. Of course, I have never been a cricketer in my life. Once in college I was reluctantly asked to be a stand-by player in a game with seniors. I did not get a chance to pad up though. That is the closest I have been to a cricketer. So I did what I do best. Create an Excel workbook celebrating Sachin’s test career.
Thank you Sachin – his test career in a dashboard
Here is a dashboard I made visualizing his test cricket statistics. It is dynamic, fun & awesome (just like Sachin).
(click on the image to enlarge)
Designing a dashboard to track Employee vacations [case study]
HR managers & department heads always ask, “So what is the vacation pattern of our employees? What is our average absent rate?”
Today lets tackle that question and learn how to create a dashboard to monitor employee vacations.
What do HR Managers need? (end user needs)
There are 2 aspects tracking vacations.
1. Data entry for vacations taken by employees
2. Status dashboard to summarize vacation data