Guideline: Setting Up a Three-Tier Measurement Dashboard using Rational Insight
This guideline describes how to set up different types of dashboards using Rational Insight.
Relationships
Main Description

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.