dashboard-brief

Dashboard Brief Skill

This skill converts a business question or monitoring need into a complete, implementation-ready dashboard specification. The output gives a data engineer or BI developer everything they need to build without a follow-up meeting.

Required Inputs

Ask the user for these if not provided:

• The business question this dashboard should answer (e.g. "How is our activation funnel performing this week?")
• Primary audience (exec / product team / operations / customer success / engineering)
• Refresh cadence (real-time / hourly / daily / weekly)
• Data sources available (e.g. Postgres, BigQuery, Mixpanel, Salesforce, Jira)
• BI tool being used (Looker / Metabase / Tableau / Power BI / Grafana / Custom / Unknown)

Output Structure

Dashboard Brief: [Dashboard Name]

Business Question: [The question this dashboard answers — verbatim from inputs or refined] Audience: [Who uses this] Refresh Rate: [Real-time / Hourly / Daily / Weekly] Data Sources: [List] BI Tool: [Tool or Unknown]

Section 1: Key Metrics (KPI Cards)

List the headline numbers that should appear at the top of the dashboard as KPI cards.

| Metric | Definition | Data Source | Comparison | |---|---|---|---| | [Metric name] | [How it's calculated] | [Table/source] | [vs. last week / vs. target / MoM] |

Aim for 3–6 KPI cards. More than 6 is noise.

Section 2: Charts & Visualisations

For each chart, specify:

Chart [N]: [Chart Title]

• Chart type: [Line / Bar / Stacked bar / Pie / Funnel / Heatmap / Table / Scatter]
• Why this chart type: [One sentence — why this type suits this data]
• X-axis / Rows: [Dimension — e.g. Date, User segment, Product]
• Y-axis / Values: [Metric — e.g. Count of active users, Revenue]
• Breakdown/colour: [Optional secondary dimension — e.g. by Plan tier, by Channel]
• Data source: [Table or source]
• Filters: [Any default filters applied — e.g. "Exclude internal test accounts"]
• Key insight to surface: [What pattern or signal this chart should help the viewer spot]

Section 3: Filters & Controls

Global filters available to dashboard viewers:

| Filter | Type | Default | Options | |---|---|---|---| | Date range | Date picker | Last 30 days | Custom | | [Segment filter] | Dropdown | All | [List relevant values] | | [Other filter] | Multi-select | All | [List relevant values] |

Section 4: Layout Recommendation

Describe the dashboard layout in plain terms:

[ROW 1 — KPI Cards]: [Metric 1] | [Metric 2] | [Metric 3] | [Metric 4]
[ROW 2 — Primary chart, full width]: [Chart name]
[ROW 3 — Two charts side by side]: [Chart A] | [Chart B]
[ROW 4 — Supporting table, full width]: [Table name]

Section 5: Data Requirements

List any data transformations, joins, or derived fields needed:

| Derived Field | Logic | Source Tables | |---|---|---| | [Field name] | [How it's calculated] | [Tables involved] |

Flag any fields that may not exist in current data infrastructure.

Section 6: Access & Ownership

• Dashboard owner: [Leave for user to fill]
• Who can edit: [Leave for user to fill]
• Who can view: [Leave for user to fill]
• Review cadence: [When should this dashboard be reviewed for relevance?]

Quality Checks

• [ ] Every chart has a stated "key insight to surface" — not just "show the data"
• [ ] KPI cards are 3–6 (not more)
• [ ] Chart types are justified
• [ ] Layout follows visual hierarchy (summary → detail)
• [ ] Data requirements section flags any missing fields
• [ ] Filters are practical and don't require IT to configure

Example Trigger Phrases

• "Design a dashboard to track [business process]"
• "Give me a spec for a [team] performance dashboard"
• "What should go on a [topic] dashboard?"
• "Write a dashboard brief for our [metric] monitoring"