Super Duper Hackathon! Dashboard as a Result of Teamwork
When a Team Gathers Together and Creates Something Beautiful
The Task That Kept Getting Postponed
In my company, there has been a lingering task that everyone is too busy to tackle — updating demo dashboards for clients to diversify the portfolio. It’s a crucial and valuable task but not urgent, and so far, no one has taken the initiative.
At some point, I decided to radically solve the problem and announced a “hackathon” on this topic. I gathered all the employees in the office (we embrace hybrid and remote work), sponsored a trip to another city for remote workers, promised everyone delicious lunches covered by the company, and, putting all other tasks on hold for two days, assigned my team the task of creating this beautiful new demo dashboard!
The goal was to pour into it all our new experiences of recent years, all fresh ideas, all popular trends, and, at the same time, make the product interesting for potential clients. Because the peculiarity of our sphere — dashboard development — often demands demo cases that closely resemble their activities. In other words, a dashboard on sales is not interesting, but a dashboard on furniture sales is. Not just a dashboard on project status but specifically in construction.
I also think it’s crucial for the dashboard to tell a specific story, some special case, and solve specific understandable tasks. Therefore, my team will need to step into the shoes of potential clients, not just designers and developers. And come up with requirements and a brief themselves.
For me, it was essential to involve not only developers in this event but also marketers, designers, creative folks — those far from dashboard development. Because a fresh perspective is crucial, and team building — especially when many works remotely — is incredibly important too!
Let me outline the main stages of the resulting hackathon, and then I’ll tell you more.
1. Research of existing materials — both in-house and on the internet.
2. Selection of a specific theme.
3. Choosing the potential dashboard user.
4. Project development by blocks — design / data / story.
5. Draft assembly.
6. Final dashboard assembly.
Of course, at some point, everything didn’t go according to plan, and the process became more chaotic, but the team still achieved an excellent result.
Looking Around
We had several main ideas — creating a sales dashboard, an HR-themed one, or a dashboard focusing on the company’s cash flows, a sort of “Where’s the Money?”. Then, several employees from different departments prepared presentations on the following topics:
- What interesting sales cases do we have?
- What are the current trendy trends in HR dashboards worldwide — awards, competitions, and just galleries?
- What stylish design techniques are popular and applicable for dashboards now?
Gathering all the most interesting features from these selections, my team decided to focus on a sales demo dashboard and chose the face of a potential client — the head of the sales department. They used my brief form Napkin Technical Specifications — to make the TS for the demo-dashboard.
Understanding who the user would be, the team collectively determined which typical metrics would be useful for them. Based on this, they sketched diagrams on the dashboard.
So, the battle plan was ready! Onward!
The team divided into groups:
- One group took on the prototyping.
- Another handled building the data model and its generation.
- The third designed demonstration scenarios.
Let’s go!
Who Is the Hero of Our Story?
It was crucial at the start to define who our client is, what they would want to see, and what problem might lead them to us. We ran the work of all three groups in parallel, regularly checking in to understand if we were moving in the same direction.
By the evening of the first day, we had several design options for several pages of the sales dashboard. On one client, the team couldn’t stop and created layouts for three clients:
1. Strategic — for the director.
2. Intermediate — for the department head.
3. Operational — for the sales manager.
Not all ideas and wishes could fit on one sheet, but three demo dashboards are even better than one. It will allow us to showcase it to a broader spectrum of potential clients. The key is to ensure that the work is brought to completion and that the team doesn’t get scattered in the process with too many tasks.
Working Together and Individually
The first day was the most active and creative, filled with energy and laughter! The team did pull-ups on the office bar, drew with colored pencils, ordered pizza, took photos, laughed, and chatted on Zoom with remote colleagues.
Despite the relaxed atmosphere, by the end of the day, data tables for all the dashboards were created and filled with test data. Stylish design layouts for all dashboards were developed, incorporating all the latest trends and interesting features. Oh, what beauty!
Of course, for demo dashboards, you can use more eye-catching designs than for real projects. After all, a demo should grab attention and impress with its beauty, but it’s also important not to overdo it with complex design!
Several intriguing stories hidden in the data were composed. Potential clients, like detectives, could find problems in the demo company. I hope to tell you more about this in a separate article! Incredible! Now all that’s left is to implement it in the BI package, which is already a familiar task for us.
Another fun moment was inventing a fictitious company featured in the demo dashboard, with a humorous name and interesting products. The team had an incredible time injecting jokes and Easter eggs into the design of the dashboard for this company.
Bringing It All Together into a Unified Project
The second day proceeded in a more serious atmosphere because all the tasks were understood; it was time to create a working “clickable” project in Power BI.
This stage was perhaps the easiest, resembling working with an external client after collecting all the requirements and approving the sketch. The team delved into testing the data model, assembling the design according to the layout, and debugging user stories.
I, like a guardian angel, fluttered over them, amused by their seriousness and efficiency. And, of course, admiring the brilliance of my idea.
By the end of the day, everything was ready — a working prototype of the dashboard in three versions and several designs. The team breathed out, hugged, and dispersed to different cities, full of impressions and positive emotions!
Of course, for several more days, we tested the project, made minor edits, checked how the scenarios embedded in the dashboard worked, and prepared the project for publication. But this was already a routine process.
Impressions and Results
In the end, I am incredibly pleased with the activity that brightened up the gray autumn weekdays for me and my team. It turned not only into a team-building event but also produced a very useful product for my company!
Emotions and impressions are important, friendly relationships within the team too. But many insights and new information about the industry and the peculiarities of working with dashboards were gained even by those specialists in my firm who usually deal with tasks far from dashboard development. And this will improve their understanding of their work too. After all, we are all doing one same thing!
The result of this hackathon:
Three interactive sales dashboards — for specialists of different levels — in a stylish, interesting design, with relevant KPIs, interesting stories inside, and even touches of humor. I am satisfied! And there’s so much content for articles!
This hackathon turned out to be a miniature project and is a vivid example of how teams work on a dashboard. Of course, teams can vary in size and composition, and sometimes a project is done by one person, sometimes ten.
But it is crucial that all parts of the team work synchronously and are synchronized primarily with the needs of the client! That’s why the first thing we tried to understand was who they are — those people who will click on our beautiful and fun demo dashboard.
Thanks for reading!
So, if there are important tasks hanging in your company that you never seem to have time for amid the hustle and bustle, I recommend this wonderful method — an internal hackathon! The team gets a breath of fresh air, and you get a solution to a long-unresolved problem!
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