Start with the Conclusion (a meaningful one)

on 24 July 0 Comment

If there’s one thing I keep learning, it’s

Start with the Conclusion -> and let’s qualify that to be a meaningful one

People like to know what’s the deal up front.  No time wasted trying to figure out where this is going.  No, nothing is being given away.  If it’s something that’s of interest, people will stay more tuned in.  Otherwise, let’s not waste anybody’s time. 😐

So now that the audience has been reeled in, build up with supporting information.  Take into account your audience of course –

  • Address impatient people first
    • bullet points
    • meaningful headlines
    • executive summary
  • Then go back and forth between details of what’s happened for the analytics, and the visuals, what’s the future for the creatives
  • Finally, talk to the most patient members of your audience

NOTE:  Don’t water down and make a mix all of the above into a mush soup.  Address the personalities accordingly.

 

A Better Conclusion in Power BI

In Power BI, there is a tendency to have generic chart headlines (guilty) and this is partly due to the nature of the reports having the desired low touch aspect.   A couple of ways this can be improved is through the use of –

  • Measures – create measures for the values that change and insert into the Titles
    • A few tutorials out there in youtube land
    • Take it a step further and add the context with values
      • eg. <Store A> had sales of <+/- %> in <month> due to <top reason>  vs  <Store A> Sales in <month>
  • Conditional formatting – icons quickly identify up, down, above, below, etc…

So, these take more effort, but just like anything else the follow through is what’s important.  You can hit the ball over the net, but how you follow through your swing is what will determine the effectiveness of your shot.

 

Scott’s 5 Vacation House Rules

on 09 July 0 Comment

😎 It’s summer, perfect vacation time!  If you can, a change of scenery does wonders.  Inspiration and learning come from everywhere.  And nothing beats being somewhere else than the office, whether it be at home or the office office.

And if you can’t go somewhere right now, get inspired from tv shows.  I do watch a lot of crap tv, but I can still learn 🙂

What I really like are Scott’s 5 Vacation House Rules – so applicable to BI design!

  1. Do Your Research – understand your users and audience, know the data inside and out, what are the data points that will elicit action?
  2. Plan Your Design – how will your users interact with the report?  will they view it on mobile or their laptop? will it be integrated in a powerpoint? do your users know how to enable the filter panel, use the slicers or drill through? be intentional with the design.
  3. Get Noticed – make sure people know about the report and give it that wow factor!  doesn’t do any good if people can’t find it or aren’t even aware it exists.  promote promote promote!
  4. Get Your Hands Dirty – get your users involved to provide their design input or images they would like as part of the report.
  5. Be Your Guest – put yourself in the user’s shoes and test drive your report.  what questions would they want answered next? is it intuitive for someone of their skill level? does it look good on mobile? does the data flow in the right order?

 

Looking forward to being here soon! ⬇

Woot woot! PL 300 ⭐

on 07 July 0 Comment

I just passed the PL 300 Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst Exam!

It was a little sketchy to be honest if I was going to pull it off this morning, but lo and behold it was managed.

 

Tips:

Don’t be like me and avoid coffee this morning.  I had my reasons – didn’t want to have to go while driving, while taking the test, didn’t want to be nervous from the caffeine…but then I was a bit groggy and reading the case studies were a bit of a blur…

Join a study group to push you along… thank goodness for running into the Power BI Women Meet Up group via Twitter, I wouldn’t have passed this first time round for sure.  And bonus… got a voucher to waive the exam fees.  🤩

Make sure to get familiar with ALL the features of Power BI even if you don’t normally use them in your business needs.

 

Weeding

on 04 July 0 Comment

Long weekend = weeding -> the ones in the backyard

This always reminds me of an office conversation where my boss tells me to just douse everything in weedkiller.  I counter that I like to pull them out by the root (Elvis style).  And one of our chief scientists poses the question of wondering what will propragate next now that I’ve cleared out the space. 🤯

Just one of life’s many metaphors.

 

Of course, no 4th of July weekend post is complete without some Usher –

 

Me: Finally got rid of all these weeds!

Other weeds:

watch this

Data data everywhere, now what?

on 26 June 0 Comment

So now that we have data to work with, now what?  I wish I could remember the person who told me this, a representative for some application (I’ll have to look at my emails way back) – he told me about the 5 Cs of Data.

5Cs of Data

  • Current
  • Complete
  • Context
  • Consistent
  • Correct

In order to make this report or dashboard of use, it needs to be Current.  Understand what refresh schedule is needed or enough for this type of report.  Is a daily refresh enough?  In this case, a live connection would be ideal since it’s dealing with real time transactions and availability if we were to use it to buy.  If we were to just analyze trends, maybe an hourly refresh.  We’d also have to factor in the speed of the refresh.  Given my personal resources, and it’s working with web data, it’s a bit slow – approximate 30 minutes for 3,000 rows.  With organizational datasets, it could be 30 million rows within 30 minutes.

    • What is end use of report?
    • What is the refresh speed?

Complete – Usually we are missing pieces that would give us a better report – in this case, what about misspelled entries (add another query for common misspellings?)?  In organizations, data that is not structured (see if this can be addressed, if not data clean up is needed) can give multiple versions of a name and not aggregrate.  Think about the different scenarios of how the data you are working with can come across and account for as much of it as possible.

Context is what really gives data its meaning.  I attended a presentation by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic (Storytelling with Data) and what I remember most is when looking at a report or dashboard, be blunt and think to yourself “SO WHAT?”.  If I see a record for sale for $20, how do I know how to act?  Is it a good deal or not? Having other data points such as market value would be a good start.  What does it cost to ship? How many have sold recently at what prices?  What is the condition of the item?  Does the seller have a good reputation?  And then take it a step further and make it easy for the viewer to know the overall score (good buy, poor buy).

Being Consistent is also key.  Making sure that comparisons are indeed apples to apples.  Apply the same parameters to historical data or account for changes in the new data.  Paying attention to what units are being reported, for example currencies and their exchange rates.

And finally, that the data is Correct.  Seems like a given but things happen during the journey of the data from the source to your end report.  An incorrect formula, a relationship that changed – make sure to check and put systems in place where you can easily identify areas that could go awry.  See how much of this can be avoided by going to the root cause of the error which leads to Roche’s Maxim –

Data should be transformed as far upstream as possible, and as far downstream as necessary.

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