Balanced Scorecards and Operational Dashboards with Microsoft Excel, 2nd Edition

Chapter 28

Finishing Touches

God is in the details.

—Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Architect

1886–1969

Creating a bulletproof system that shines with small finishing touches will make you look like a professional. This chapter provides you with a few useful tips.

Adding Context and Comments with Briefing Books

The Briefing Book, shown in Figure 28-1, is a supporting feature that should be behind every Balanced Scorecard and operational dashboard you distribute to others. It contains the contextual, historical, and action information that doesn’t appear in a chart or table. It shows the dashboard’s purpose and status, actions that have been taken, ownership of objectives, and data and contact details.

Figure 28-1: A Briefing Book shows the context, actions, and owners related to a dashboard’s objective and metrics.

The Briefing Book you create may contain only text, or it may contain text, data tables, and charts. You can create a Briefing Book on a worksheet by copying and pasting the chart and then formatting cells so that text wraps into paragraphs. In Excel 2007 and Excel 2010, select the cells you want to act as a block. On the Home tab, in the Alignment group, choose Wrap Text.

In Excel 2003 you can create large, contiguous blocks of cells that contain word-wrapped paragraphs. Select all the cells you want to appear as a block, choose Format > Cells, and select the Alignment tab. ...