I know I am late to the party, but better late than…, uh! forget it.
As the keen readers of our blog knew, I like cricket and I show my enthusiasm by making an excel dashboard (or infographic) whenever Indian team reaches a major milestone. So naturally, I was super excited when we won the ICC Worldcup 2011. Last time Indian won the event was in 1983 and my idea of a dashboard at that time was a bottle of milk and jingo-bell, my favorite shake-to-make-annoying-noise toy. I think our latest world-cup victory deserves something more than that. So here we go.
Excel Dashboard to Celebrate India’s World-cup Victory (2011)
(Click here to see larger version)
How is this Dashboard constructed?
This dashboard was one of the most difficult ones I built, because I did not know what to put in the dashboard. I know that the dashboard should reflect our team’s hardwork, journey, outstanding performances but I had no clue which format & layout exposed these qualities. So I took a lot of time drawing up sketches of possible dashboards before hitting on the present layout. Once I came-up with the layout, the actual dashboard took me about 4 hours to make (and may be another 4 for polish).
Here are some of the techniques used in the dashboard:
- The dashboard is divided in to 3 areas – Highlights, our journey to the victory and best performances.
- Highlights: This section shows overall summary of all the 9 matches India have played. It shows some interesting statistics, how much our top players contributed to our victory etc.
Techniques used: All parts of this are made with text boxes and simple text formulas. - Our Journey to victory: This was the most time consuming & intense part of the dashboard as I made this portion interactive. The left side shows all the matches we have played by date and the results. When you select a particular match, the right side portion shows a match summary. This includes match venue, result, toss details, India’s top 3 batsmen, top 3 bowlers, photos of India’s best batting & bowling performers, oppositions score, best batsman, bowler, their stats. It also shows the country flags etc.
Techniques used: The click to select as described in on-demand charts article, conditional formatting, picture links, more picture links, LARGE formula.
The most difficult part of this was to get a moving arrow that would change its position based on which match is selected. I did this with picture links, offset formula and a dynamic named range. (Examine the named range movingArrow). - Best performances (top 10): In this area, I showed the best batting, bowling, catching, partnership performances for all the matches in World-cup (not just India’s matches).
Techniques used: All the charts are made in Excel 2010 using solid bar conditional formatting & picture link based techniques. Later, I just copied them and pasted as images so that they look same in Excel 2007 also.
Colors & Fonts:
- I choose the blue color as it is team India’s jersey color. I used orange to contrast the best performances.
- The fonts are Bookman Old Style & Meriyo UI.
Download the Cricket World-cup Dashboard Excel file:
Click here to download the locked workbook. [mirror]
Why lock it? I am giving away unlocked version of this workbook + a 36 minute lesson to all the customers who buy Excel Dashboard Tutorial or Excel School Dashboards. So if you want an unlocked copy of this, go ahead and get either of them. (If you have previously bought one of these products, you will receive an email with instructions on downloading your bonus.)
Credits:
All the data for the dashboard came from espncricinfo.com.
Special thanks to Ravindra, my assistant, for compiling the data.
How do you like the Dashboard?
I was afraid whether I can do justice to our team’s glorious world-cup victory in a dashboard. So I kept on delaying this. But in the end, I am happy with the dashboard. It tells the story of our team’s journey and highlights best performers.
What do you think? Did you like this dashboard? How would you have designed it?
As an aside, Many of our readers know only about cricket that chirps. So I want to ask, did this dashboard make any sense to you?
Other Awesome Resources on Excel Dashboards:
- Excel Info-graphic Poster to Celebrate Sachin’s 200 runs
- Excel Dashboard with 10007 comments data
- Excel Dashboard to prove that Hui is awesome
- More on Excel Dashboards
- Want to make dashboards using Excel – Join Excel School.
13 Responses to “Gantt Box Chart Tutorial & Template – Download and Try today”
Hi Chandoo
As one of your students I have followed your detailed example through with great success. However, Excel is acting in an unexpected way and I wonder if you could take a look?
http://cid-95d070c79aef808e.office.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Gantt%20Box%20Chart.xlsm
On my version, I have to type 40239 (Which equates to 2 Mar 2010) to get the chart to display 31 May 2010 (which should be 40329)!!??
Have I done something wrong or is Excel acting up?
Thx
Oli
PS Your example file in 2007 displays correctly.
Hi,
I like this idea a lot, but I agree the name is a little drab.
As an American I may just be seeing things, but to me the combination of lines and bars on your chart looks like a bunch of cricket bats.
Maybe you could work that into a catchier name. 🙂
Cheers!
Here is some code I use to keep the axis synched.
It may be useful to some of your readers
It is based on a comment I saw on Daily Dose of Excel.
Function SynchGanttAxis(Cname, lower, upper)
'Sets the X min and X max for Category axis
Application.Volatile
On Error Resume Next
'
'Top Horizontal Axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlCategory, 1)
.MinimumScale = lower
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
'Bottom Horizontal Axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlValue, 2)
.MinimumScale = lower
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
End Function
Function SynchVerticalAxis(Cname, lower, upper)
Application.Volatile
On Error Resume Next
' Excel 2007 only
'Right hand vertical axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlValue, 1)
.MinimumScale = 0
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
End Function
@Oli.. Can you check your file again.. I see 40329...
@Dave: Even I saw things.. the bars actually looked like lollipops. How about calling this lollipop chart - now that would be yummy and goes along the tradition of naming charts after eatables (bar, pie, donut...)
@Bob: Superb stuff... thanks for sharing 🙂
Hi Chandoo
This looks really good and I think it can also be applied to show project phases / milestones.
Question: Thinking further could this be amended to display a project lifecycle (Idea through to Implementation say 7 phases) on one bar / row? Just imagine 20 projects within a programme all on one chart one bar each showing their respective lifecycle stages i.e. on one page.
Idea: As the Gantt Box Chart this is quite intensive to set up re formatting etc how about the added extra of once you have completed this to "Save as template" i.e. saves the formatting and layout of the chart as a template so you can apply to future charts. Simple to do and will save the time formatting etc again and again and again.
Therefore tip: Click on your chart demo and then click on Save As template icon (2007) - edit file name and click on save. Ready to use / apply via Templates in Change Chart Type window.
Thanks and be very interested if the lifecycle question can be resolved
Mike
How embarrassing.
I was obviously suffering from numerical dyslexia. I was one of those days.
@Mike H: You can easily make this chart to work like a generic project lifecycle plan chart. All you have to do is,
1. in a separate sheet define the steps of lifecycle and various dates in a table (with 5 columns for each of the projects you have).
2. now use a control cell to input the project name you want to show in the chart
3. based on the input, use OFFSET Formulas to get the correct data
4. Rest is same as the tutorial above
For more info on the dynamic charting visit http://chandoo.org/wp/tag/dynamic-charts/ and http://chandoo.org/wp?s=OFFSET
Your solution is really smart but in the en Excel isn't meant to do stuff like this. I, as a former PM, always thought is was frustrating that you had to do stuff like this for something simple like a Gantt chart. So I built Tom's Planner. And would like to plug it here. I think it really solves the problem you are trying to solve in the most efficient way. Check out http://www.tomsplanner.com for a free account or play around with the demo.
Hi there,
Chandoo - this is really a very nice and helpfull chart - I adopted it, so I can report a forecast or the delay of a certain task (coming from my role as an auditor for projects).
One topic I´m currently struggeling with: I do have a project lasting for lets say 12 month. For a management reporting, I want to have kind of snapshot, lets say one month back and 2 month in the future. I tried with the offset formula, but failed. Any idea?
Thx
Lopi
[...] Ein viel geliebter Klassiker ist die Erstellung von GANTT-Diagrammen mit Excel. Wir hatten das Thema wiederholt schon hier. Chandoo.org hat sich mal wieder mit einer neuen Variante hervorgetan: Das GANTT-Box-Chart. [...]
[...] [...]
Hi Chandoo - fantastic xls. One thing I can't figure out how to do is adjust the alignment of the vertical axis. I would like to left align so that I could indent to represent sub tasks. Can that be done? Or is there a better way?
I've been trying to work out if there's a way to show weekends on the graph. The closest thing I've got is to add them on a secondary axis, but then I haven't been able to keep both axis lined up together! Any ideas?
Following on from this - is it possible to show things like holidays?