Yesterday we have posted how to use excel combo charts to group related time events. In the comments, Art Johnson says,
This is awesome. I love this blog. I have dealt with this issue before. Usually my issue is monthly anomolies caused by fiscal months of 4 weeks followed by 4 weeks, and then 5 weeks in each quarter. This causes a spike in March, June, Sept., and Dec. It’s one reason I prefer to look at quarterly trends rather than monthly. This chart is quite nice to see these effects. Is there a way to just toggle between two charts? One of weekends and one of weekdays? […]
This effect can be easily achieved with a cup of coffee, one combo box form control and the good old IF formula. Look at it yourself.
I am not going to provide the complete recipe. But here is the gist. I am sure you can take the help of that coffee in case you are stuck.
- Add a combo-box form control using forms tool bar or Developer ribbon. (not able to find the developer toolbar in excel 2007? see this)
- Set the input range for combo box to two cells where the values “weekdays” and “weekends” are mentioned.
- Also set the “cell link” for the combo box to some free cell like IV32000
- Now change the dummy series (the range where the column chart values for zebra lines are mentioned) values to a formula.
- The formula should be able to change the dummy values based on the selection in combo box. This is your homework to figure out.
- That is all. You now have a chart that dynamically groups events based on user selection. Pretty cool eh ?
Download the workbook and see it yourself
Click here to download the workbook and play with it.
Where can you use this technique?
Oh, several places. To begin with,
- To highlight new products vs. older products in a product-wise sales chart
- To highlight top 10 vs. bottom 10 values in a big chart
- To highlight values of a certain product / project vis-a-vis the whole set of values
What do you think about this idea?
Have you ever tried similar ideas in a report or dashboard? What is your experience? Personally I find dynamic charts more effective compared to static charts. Users like them, they like to play with the control(s) and make their own observations. Do you agree?
PS: If you are looking for a way to compare 2 KPIs or metrics in charts, see the part 5 of dashboard tutorial
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
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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.