The Secret Life of Dashboards
Workshop
About the Event
This skills-building workshop will give participants the ability to walk through the data lifecycle and build informative dashboards using Power BI and/or Tableau to shine the light of data-driven decision-making.
Guidehouse facilitators will walk through three phases of the data lifecycle (take stock, collect and clean, and analyze/visualize/dashboard) and demonstrate tools, techniques, best practices, and draw upon Guidehouse’s lessons learned working with clients in the federal sector to produce visually-appealing and insight-saturated dashboards.
Participants are expected to bring their own computers, download Power BI or Tableau prior to the session, and follow along with the facilitators during the session.
There is no shortage of software promising data-driven decision-making and flashy visualizations. However, often, practitioners can feel overwhelmed with options and may not even know where to start – even with software that is free and easy-to-use! This presents a missed opportunity for evaluators to “share their light” with non-evaluators and find ways to analyze data differently.
This session explains universal best practices for cleaning and uploading data into dashboarding platforms, providing practitioners with a starting point to use virtually any dashboarding platform. Facilitators will walk through three phases of the data lifecycle:
Take stock: Participants will understand the audience’s preferences and define evaluation questions.
Collect and clean: Participants will understand where to find data and popular preferences dashboarding platforms have for raw data (e.g., how to transform “short and fat” data into “long and skinny” data, naming conventions).
Analyze/visualize/dashboard: Participants will understand how dashboarding software can serve as a data validation tool and identify gaps in existing datasets, and how to build interactive dashboards that can help stakeholders review and slice data in new ways.
In the last 20-30 minutes of the session, participants will test either Tableau or Power BI on their own. Facilitators will provide the participants with a dataset and a series of exercises that are akin to using the software in the real world.
Guidehouse facilitators will walk through three phases of the data lifecycle (take stock, collect and clean, and analyze/visualize/dashboard) and demonstrate tools, techniques, best practices, and draw upon Guidehouse’s lessons learned working with clients in the federal sector to produce visually-appealing and insight-saturated dashboards.
Participants are expected to bring their own computers, download Power BI or Tableau prior to the session, and follow along with the facilitators during the session.
There is no shortage of software promising data-driven decision-making and flashy visualizations. However, often, practitioners can feel overwhelmed with options and may not even know where to start – even with software that is free and easy-to-use! This presents a missed opportunity for evaluators to “share their light” with non-evaluators and find ways to analyze data differently.
This session explains universal best practices for cleaning and uploading data into dashboarding platforms, providing practitioners with a starting point to use virtually any dashboarding platform. Facilitators will walk through three phases of the data lifecycle:
Take stock: Participants will understand the audience’s preferences and define evaluation questions.
Collect and clean: Participants will understand where to find data and popular preferences dashboarding platforms have for raw data (e.g., how to transform “short and fat” data into “long and skinny” data, naming conventions).
Analyze/visualize/dashboard: Participants will understand how dashboarding software can serve as a data validation tool and identify gaps in existing datasets, and how to build interactive dashboards that can help stakeholders review and slice data in new ways.
In the last 20-30 minutes of the session, participants will test either Tableau or Power BI on their own. Facilitators will provide the participants with a dataset and a series of exercises that are akin to using the software in the real world.
Speakers
| Name | Title | Biography |
|---|---|---|
| Georges Fadel | Managing Consultant | Georges Fadel is experienced in managing teams to develop data-driven analytical products and web tools for several USG agencies. He has more than 12 years of experience working with data management, analytics, visualization, and training. |
| Corinna Bordewieck | Senior Consultant | Corinna has 10 years of experience in data management and analytics for various government and multilateral clients. She is experienced in cleaning and analyzing large datasets, data collection, and research in resource-constrained environments. |