Should we build a dashboard or keep a spreadsheet for weekly kpis?

[LukeUL]

I’m trying to decide if it’s worth the effort to build a custom dashboard for my small team’s weekly KPIs, or if a simpler shared spreadsheet is still the better tool for us. I’m worried the dashboard will become another thing to maintain, but the spreadsheet is getting messy and hard to read during our check-ins.

[Avery84]

We tried building a dashboard last quarter. It was ambitious, the data sources kept breaking, and we spent more time arguing about definitions than reading the numbers. In the end the weekly check-in leaned back on a familiar spreadsheet because the team could tweak it on the fly.

[Aubrey93]

The spreadsheet path isn’t pretty, but it’s what we know. Every time someone adds a new metric the sheet starts to feel like a maze, and the key KPI drift gets buried in filters.

[ScarlettT]

I did a mid-size attempt to clean up the sheet with a single chart for the top KPI. It helped for one week, then we had a data pull issue and the chart looked wrong. We went back to manual updates and quick notes.

[Donald81]

Maybe the real issue isn’t the tool at all. I remember a checkin where we argued about coffee while the numbers slid by, and we never got to the insight. Do you think the problem is the meeting format more than the tool?