A three-tier measurement system involves multiple dashboards that show business-, operational-, and practice-level
data.
Business-level dashboards or scorecards present high-level trend information only, no details. The
purpose is usually to let the users know if there is anything that they need to handle. That way, they won’t spend time
looking into situations that do not currently need their attention. IBM® Rational® Insight contains several Executive
dashboards that present this information. You can modify them to suit specific needs. Generally, these dashboards
should include measures that illustrate progress (or lack of progress) against the organization’s business objectives.
Operational dashboards address organizational performance and effectiveness. They generally are
related to the business-level dashboards and present operational measures that have been identified as supporting the
organization’s operational objectives. For example, a business-level cost indicator might be followed by an operational
productivity dashboard, or a business-level customer satisfaction indicator might be followed by an operational quality
dashboard.
Practice-level dashboards supply information intended to help an organization improve its
effectiveness and to measure progress during an improvement process. These dashboards should contain practice-oriented
metrics that are related to the practices that the organization has adopted to meet business and operational goals.
It is important to follow the procedure outlined in Creating a Dashboard using Rational Insight for each of the three tiers. The Value
Traceability Tree (VTT) provides a framework for doing this, because relationships between the tiers are essential. The
VTT can help relate business objectives shown in business-level dashboards to operational objectives shown in
operational dashboards. The VTT also recommends practices that can be used and measured to achieve the desired
improvements in the organization.
Data for all of these is available from IBM® Rational® Insight, although it may need to be customized for specific
environments. Reports to present that data can be constructed with Cognos Report Studio and inserted into dashboards as
described in Creating a Dashboard using Rational Insight. IBM® Rational® Insight includes an
extensive set of sample reports that may meet your needs or that you can customize.
IBM® Rational® Insight also contains examples of dashboards. One convenient way to structure these dashboards is as a
multipage dashboard. This method provides a pane on the left side with the names of several dashboards, and
users can display the ones that they want with a single click. The names come from a Cognos folder hierarchy, so there
is no hardcoded list or programming. See the Executive View dashboard provided for an example, and see Cognos
documentation for details on how to implement that dashboard.
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