3 Things You Need On Every KPI Graph

The frighteningly vast majority of performance reports and dashboards are filled with graphs that fail to communicate the real signals our performance measures and KPIs are desperate to show us.

These reports encourage us to react to trends that aren’t there at all, and to miss important signals about future problems. We need a revolution in the performance reporting space, and a big part of that revolution should be the use of control charts, charts that include 3 very powerful features that dramatically improve our interpretation of and response to our performance measures and KPIs.

FEATURE 1: Your performance measure in time series

This month compared to last month, this month compared to the same month last year, this month compared to target – all are limited and risky, misleading comparisons to make. Why? Because you have no context within which to assess if the difference you’re looking at is typical or not. There will always be differences, but the only way to see which ones are worthy of your response (or explanation) is to see the data in the full context of a time series.

Plot your performance measures in time series, with as much history as you can reasonably get your hands on. Around 20 values is good, such as the last two years’ worth of monthly values.

FEATURE 2: The measure’s mean line

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Stacey Barr is a specialist in organisational performance measurement, helping corporate planners, business analysts and performance measurement officers confidently facilitate their organisation to create and use meaningful performance measures with lots of buy-in. Sign up for Stacey’s free email tips at