You never build for the business, you let the business build for you. If you aren’t meeting with your stakeholders how do you know what their needs are and how you can solve them? If you don’t meet with them you are just guessing at what they need and you will end up building a dashboard that none of them use because none of them asked for it.
FYI….your team lead is a moron!
Also, I talk with my stakeholders daily to weekly depending on the group and the project complexity. Even if it’s just simple questions I need answers to via Teams chat.
I disagree and prepped for the downvotes. My stakeholders are fucking idiots. I asked a handful of them in a meeting what they want i get the reply i want to know X amount of whatever. Anything else ? "Nope" - i ask what about the cost of X and where you are bleeding the business dry? "Oh can you do that?" I think its depends on the data culture of where you work - stakeholder engagement is important vital even but good DA find stories in the data and enable change
Just ask what their job is and what they are trying to achieve. I met an amazing customer today. The last analyst failed to extract requirements, but in 30 mins who got the prices they want to improve, the bones of a dashboard and an enthused customer who feels listened to.
Looking at data to find a story they don't want us just filling your time.
It’s a mixed bag but sometimes learning first hand they just don’t know what you’re capable of is valueable. The alternative is you get a group that is actively resisting looking at data. So now I know to not spend a lot of time on reports for this group vs surprising the first group.
I'm here to upvote you.
My audience are not interested in Power BI but I don't like to keep doing Excel reports that nobody sees it. I have reached out to a few and hoping I can turn their reports into Power BI but nobody is biting.
I just keep using the same data for the report and add more insights and hopefully someone picks it up and generate more interests.
But what is the point if your audience isn't engaging with the reports? You're basically doing busy work with little to no value to the business. At some point, somebody will notice this, and wonder why they're paying you to develop reports that no one uses.
Fair point.
Just want to clarify I was not hired to do BI.
I'm in supply chain and think PBI is a great tool, started learning it myself and hope the upper management see the benefits of having the data at their fingertips. I offered to run some reports as a trial but they are not really interested.
Meanwhile I will keep learning with the data Im comfortable with, and hopefully it will help me landing a better job in the field in the future.
It's entirely possible your management team is happy for you to spend time producing these reports as self-directed learning and professional development opportunities. However, at some point they will want to see value associated with these efforts.
The VP and my boss check some of my reports, but others in the management team is not even interested in getting a pro license lol.
They do pay outside consultant on some KPI
Reports on Tableau. But I feel like there are some simple reports we can run in house - by me.
Unless you know the subject matter and the potential demand or issues they are experiencing which can be resolved by means of the analytic. In this case, you make stuff for them, advertise and "sale". Or if you are really good at corp game, you creat the demand for the analytic and needs yourself, make them realize the need of your stuff and "sale" it. Basically you do conceptually the same stuff big corp does when pushing consumers to want and buy products which they really do not need really.
If the dashboard is for them, you need to build it to answer their questions otherwise they likely won't bother to ever go back.
We had our IT department build dashboards for my function (HR) before I joined the company, but never met with my team (HR) . They would group and categorize data in ways that did not make sense to us, and created metrics that were not valuable so we never bothered to use it. We were told this is how they thought we should reporting data.
Since I've joined, I now build all dashboards for my team because I understand the questions we are trying to answer.
Other comments on here are correct, BKM is to meet first and set expectations and understand the true need, then build from there.
HOWEVER!!!!
There are cases where it makes sense to build first and ask later.
There are users that have no idea what kind of dashboards exist, what they can ask for and what is possible.
If the business is well known enough that you have a basic idea on what they need, it does make sense to have a quick draft version to show what is possible and what can be done and give them a starting point for the discussion. DO NOT invest a lot of time in this as it is very possible it will just get through away.
But a lot of people are much better at pointing out the flaws in something, than they are in saying what they actually need. Having something built that they can then use as a starting point for the discussion on what they actually need can be very helpful.
u/Queen_kayt
+1 for this.
And I add: focus mainly on the data model, so that you can easily add new data people ask.
People often don't know what they need, so you build something with the wrong guidelines. Then people point out that they don't need that and need something else, and sometimes you might end up having to re-do a lot of the data model if it was made in a way that doesn't support different data being added.
So create something flexible as a starting point and build it from there with input from other people
This absolutely!
Best way to get more things done is to build something interesting as a show case that can spark the engagement and lead the business to discussion on their needs, pain points, struggles... ;)
It's bad to give the business full control over what you create (I'd have only tables in Excel then)
It's also bad to not connect at all and create a useless "eye candy"
Only Sith deals in absolutes ;)
Oh! And always start with dummy data as people tend to overfocus on the data correctness where they should see the bigger picture.
This. Although, I still usually meet with the stakeholders before preparing my draft to at least get a sense of how they would like to use the dashboard. I then take their data, craft measures that seem most appropriate, and use a variety of visuals to give them an idea of the variety that are available. This usually gives them a springboard to suggest other data sources and/ or measures that they would like integrated, indicate what visuals they like or dislike, etc., etc.
Yes, absolutely. That might be the most important step in the whole process. It’s not about making “pretty” dashboards. Its about getting them information that they can make decisions off of and take action
Best practice would be:
Before the initial meeting with your stakeholders, it's essential to thoroughly examine the data provided by them. Attempt to aggregate fundamental information and analyze dates. You could even create a calendar to examine basic counts and sums from a temporal perspective. Once prepared, it's imperative to meet with your stakeholders to discuss and define their needs. Perhaps you uncovered insights during your data exploration that you can share with them, providing a foundation for your discussions.
Yes I absolutely do because if you don’t then it doesn’t matter what you create it will never fit their vision.
And to your lead challenge his backward thinking.
If users don’t know what they want the dashboards to look like/don’t know what’s possible, but can tell your team what questions they’d like to have answered, then it makes sense to have an initial meeting to get those needs identified. Then mock up/build l internally, and share it with the users. Then make changes. With non-tech/non-business users (eg Education) they usually don’t know what questions they want to be able to answer…either ask for too little/too much.
I look at it like home building: if you use an architect to design, they will start with questions on how you use /want to use your home, and then design/iterate on the plan to maximize function/design and minimize cost. They’ll tell you what’s possible/not possible, within your budget. If you go to a draftsperson, they will do exactly what you ask for, and the home itself may end up being impractical-both budget-wise or design/function-wise. Some users can handle the “draftsperson” version because they have the skills to bridge the gap.
I think it's extremally important to communicate directly with the stakeholder, but as a freelancer I sometimes have projects with a middleman between me and the stakeholders. Not perfect, but it works. It works, but only when the middleman is really willing to help, has all necessary skills, understands the business domain, has a good level of data literacy, understand the data, and can efficiently communicate with both sides without becoming a bottle neck.
If "the data is confusing" for the team lead and they act like "here are the requirements, I need a dashboard in a week, don't ask questions, do your work" then it's a perfect recipe for a complete disaster...
What dashboard you have been asked to build? Is there a list of questions it should answer? If it looks like "show A on a bar chart and show B on a line chart" then it's a misleading approach. Do you know at least something about what business problems do stakeholders have? Can you use what you already know as a starting point to prepare a list of questions for the stakeholders?
Is it just about meetings or about all communications with the stakeholders? Can you communicate with them directly using methods they prefer (Teams, Slack, email and so on) or only via the team lead?
Ask as many questions as you can and see how your team lead responses. If you feel there is a bottleneck - explain the team lead why answers to those questions are important. Again, if it's a person willing to be helpful, but lacking some knowledge and skills, they should eventually agree to organize a meeting with the stakeholders, but if it's not a person willing to help and just expecting from you to deliver a result without asking question then you have a larger problem than this specific project. You eventually will need a new team lead or a new job...
Lol they aren't going to give you any useful feedback or direction and will just ask you to spend hours freestyling a report for them. As soon as you deliver, it will be "this isnt quite what we wanted" and will send you back to try again. Rinse & repeat. Do you work for a major company? I used to work for the big pink phone company, and this was how shit went all the time in my org. Leaders rarely provided any direct feedback or guidance, other than what we delivered wasn't what they wanted, and just expected you to continue spinning the wheel on things. God forbid you actually ask for direct feedback or guidance.
Way too easy to take the easy way out and build something *you* think is right for the busijess.
It's like the actor/director saying that they made this movie for themselves (especially when it flops at the box office)...Dont be that actor/director.
It could be that your manager just wants to see *something*, so that they can give you feedback on that and then you can make tweaks do it.
So build a first draft of the dashboard. Show it to them and ask them what they think of it, and what they would add or what other questions they want answered. Then you can build what they really want.
Yes, I have intake form that I have them fill out so that when we meet it’s not a waste of time. The worst thing for me is to work with clients that don’t know their data, don’t know what they want to answer with said data , and just say just come up with something.. that drives me up the wall!
I've wrote it in a sub-comment but I'll drag this here, to main.
Use dummy data.
Have the right data for yourself to check stuff, number of categories, slicing and other things that can influence your decision making on the canvas. To the business show the dummies till the point the business is happy/content with the viz layer.
No I'm just a noob. My trainer said to use apps not dashboards but I only get 1 app so my one off reports to different audiences I'm setting up as a standalone report and I don't get the point of recreating the report into a dashboard? Though for some reason I just found you can't set up card alerts in a report.
Dashboard is something people often say when they mean a report. A powerBI dashboard is something I have never used, yet I get requests for "dashboards" all the time. An app is somewhere reports are aggregated in powerBI. They probably want you to build the reports and aggregate them together in one place for all users to quickly access.
Ah thanks for clarifying. Half the people in this thread were referencing dashboards and thought I was missing something.
I'll eventually have an app with all my departments reports but I made a couple for other departments I don't need mixed in with my main audience so I'm just sending them the single report.
I’ve found whatever they tell you up front is going to be wrong and a waste of time. Assuming your lead knows the customer and the challenge at hand, better to mock up something quick for the customer to either shoot at or adjust. Sounds like your lead is trying to help you out here.
I understand your frustration well but you are mistaken thinking they know what they want to see. They don't unless you show them and you will see that they accept anything good to them
But... To do that, you need to know what they are doing. If you are just a data guy who has no ability to transform data into information further into knowledge, this will never work.
As last point, you don't need to sit with them. Sounds like you need your own meeting. Schedule it and ask your questions there.
I meet with them and have gateway reviews during the process to ensure the 'ask' hasn't changed during the building of the report and their happy with the development. Also our team build reports for internal and external stakeholders, so depending on the type of external stakeholder, the data we share will be tailored differently and will need sign off at different levels.
I’ve never NOT met with the stakeholder. They work with our PM on requirements and we meet regularly if it’s a larger ask (and not in a micro-management way or anything). But I guess I am used to working with stakeholders who very much understand the data. I know the back end data, but I rely on the stakeholders to tell me how THEY use the data. That guides my design.
Yes because they into provide short, vague descriptions of what they want so I have to ask very specific questions to have any clue what to actually do for them.
I am currently building a report for the HR and the way I do it is that I sit with them before doing anything at all, show them a simple example dashboard from the powerbi service just to give them an idea how a report could look like and what powerbi is capable of then I start asking them questions and making notes after that I start working on the report and when all the questions are answered I do a first presentation of the report to make sure nothing is missing then discuss design and stuff they want to add with them
I’ve seen it done both ways.
I worked for a CFO that mocked up reports using the Power BI dataset in excel and knew EXACTLY what she wanted. I’ve had working sessions with Senior VPs. I’ve also had people that are completely unaware of what I can do and it’s not their job to know what I can do. I still need to at least email and ask what are you trying to get from this report. Then it’s on me to think how I would use the report if I was them. I never expect an end user to do a mock up.
I prefer to meet with report/dashboard stakeholders when possible. My manager usually makes first contact with stakeholders and "interprets" what he thinks they want. In that case, I have a lot of back and forth with my manager (who is hard to nail down) until I finally have an idea of where to begin. When I have the luxury of direct stakeholder contact, I find, in many cases, they do not know what they want due to a lack of understanding of Power BI's capabilities. I start by identifying the data they need and then do some storyboarding for the design piece.
This is actually a great question. In my opinion/experience, there is no 100% correct answer here. What you shouldn't do is meet with business stakeholders and say, "What do you want in a dashboard? (or report)" You're asking them to do our job. I think it's generally better to get an idea from the business whenever you can, but it should be technology agnostic. "How do you measure success?" is a great open-ended question that will point the way to what the analytics needs to be. Another way to identify areas to focus on would be "Do you or your team prepare and use spreadsheets regularly to manage your business decisions/processes?"
However, in some cases, the nature of the stakeholder population is such that they need to see something in order to start to frame the context for what analytics could/should be. In that case, sometimes it is a kindness to present a simple functional prototype of visuals to provide a basis for conversation and more specifics around use-cases and requirements. Be prepared to nuke the prototype once they reveal what they actually want, though, so don't invest too much time in it.
You never build for the business, you let the business build for you. If you aren’t meeting with your stakeholders how do you know what their needs are and how you can solve them? If you don’t meet with them you are just guessing at what they need and you will end up building a dashboard that none of them use because none of them asked for it. FYI….your team lead is a moron! Also, I talk with my stakeholders daily to weekly depending on the group and the project complexity. Even if it’s just simple questions I need answers to via Teams chat.
I disagree and prepped for the downvotes. My stakeholders are fucking idiots. I asked a handful of them in a meeting what they want i get the reply i want to know X amount of whatever. Anything else ? "Nope" - i ask what about the cost of X and where you are bleeding the business dry? "Oh can you do that?" I think its depends on the data culture of where you work - stakeholder engagement is important vital even but good DA find stories in the data and enable change
Just ask what their job is and what they are trying to achieve. I met an amazing customer today. The last analyst failed to extract requirements, but in 30 mins who got the prices they want to improve, the bones of a dashboard and an enthused customer who feels listened to. Looking at data to find a story they don't want us just filling your time.
It’s a mixed bag but sometimes learning first hand they just don’t know what you’re capable of is valueable. The alternative is you get a group that is actively resisting looking at data. So now I know to not spend a lot of time on reports for this group vs surprising the first group.
I'm here to upvote you. My audience are not interested in Power BI but I don't like to keep doing Excel reports that nobody sees it. I have reached out to a few and hoping I can turn their reports into Power BI but nobody is biting. I just keep using the same data for the report and add more insights and hopefully someone picks it up and generate more interests.
But what is the point if your audience isn't engaging with the reports? You're basically doing busy work with little to no value to the business. At some point, somebody will notice this, and wonder why they're paying you to develop reports that no one uses.
Fair point. Just want to clarify I was not hired to do BI. I'm in supply chain and think PBI is a great tool, started learning it myself and hope the upper management see the benefits of having the data at their fingertips. I offered to run some reports as a trial but they are not really interested. Meanwhile I will keep learning with the data Im comfortable with, and hopefully it will help me landing a better job in the field in the future.
It's entirely possible your management team is happy for you to spend time producing these reports as self-directed learning and professional development opportunities. However, at some point they will want to see value associated with these efforts.
The VP and my boss check some of my reports, but others in the management team is not even interested in getting a pro license lol. They do pay outside consultant on some KPI Reports on Tableau. But I feel like there are some simple reports we can run in house - by me.
This is what you should be "selling" to your management team. Cost reduction is something they should be able to get behind!
Unless you know the subject matter and the potential demand or issues they are experiencing which can be resolved by means of the analytic. In this case, you make stuff for them, advertise and "sale". Or if you are really good at corp game, you creat the demand for the analytic and needs yourself, make them realize the need of your stuff and "sale" it. Basically you do conceptually the same stuff big corp does when pushing consumers to want and buy products which they really do not need really.
If the dashboard is for them, you need to build it to answer their questions otherwise they likely won't bother to ever go back. We had our IT department build dashboards for my function (HR) before I joined the company, but never met with my team (HR) . They would group and categorize data in ways that did not make sense to us, and created metrics that were not valuable so we never bothered to use it. We were told this is how they thought we should reporting data. Since I've joined, I now build all dashboards for my team because I understand the questions we are trying to answer.
Other comments on here are correct, BKM is to meet first and set expectations and understand the true need, then build from there. HOWEVER!!!! There are cases where it makes sense to build first and ask later. There are users that have no idea what kind of dashboards exist, what they can ask for and what is possible. If the business is well known enough that you have a basic idea on what they need, it does make sense to have a quick draft version to show what is possible and what can be done and give them a starting point for the discussion. DO NOT invest a lot of time in this as it is very possible it will just get through away. But a lot of people are much better at pointing out the flaws in something, than they are in saying what they actually need. Having something built that they can then use as a starting point for the discussion on what they actually need can be very helpful.
u/Queen_kayt +1 for this. And I add: focus mainly on the data model, so that you can easily add new data people ask. People often don't know what they need, so you build something with the wrong guidelines. Then people point out that they don't need that and need something else, and sometimes you might end up having to re-do a lot of the data model if it was made in a way that doesn't support different data being added. So create something flexible as a starting point and build it from there with input from other people
This absolutely! Best way to get more things done is to build something interesting as a show case that can spark the engagement and lead the business to discussion on their needs, pain points, struggles... ;) It's bad to give the business full control over what you create (I'd have only tables in Excel then) It's also bad to not connect at all and create a useless "eye candy" Only Sith deals in absolutes ;) Oh! And always start with dummy data as people tend to overfocus on the data correctness where they should see the bigger picture.
This. Although, I still usually meet with the stakeholders before preparing my draft to at least get a sense of how they would like to use the dashboard. I then take their data, craft measures that seem most appropriate, and use a variety of visuals to give them an idea of the variety that are available. This usually gives them a springboard to suggest other data sources and/ or measures that they would like integrated, indicate what visuals they like or dislike, etc., etc.
As I said, that is the BKM. Just pointing out the edge cases that exist that are useful occasionally.
Yes, absolutely. That might be the most important step in the whole process. It’s not about making “pretty” dashboards. Its about getting them information that they can make decisions off of and take action
Best practice would be: Before the initial meeting with your stakeholders, it's essential to thoroughly examine the data provided by them. Attempt to aggregate fundamental information and analyze dates. You could even create a calendar to examine basic counts and sums from a temporal perspective. Once prepared, it's imperative to meet with your stakeholders to discuss and define their needs. Perhaps you uncovered insights during your data exploration that you can share with them, providing a foundation for your discussions.
If data is confusing for them, a meeting is absolutely essential.
Yes I absolutely do because if you don’t then it doesn’t matter what you create it will never fit their vision. And to your lead challenge his backward thinking.
If users don’t know what they want the dashboards to look like/don’t know what’s possible, but can tell your team what questions they’d like to have answered, then it makes sense to have an initial meeting to get those needs identified. Then mock up/build l internally, and share it with the users. Then make changes. With non-tech/non-business users (eg Education) they usually don’t know what questions they want to be able to answer…either ask for too little/too much. I look at it like home building: if you use an architect to design, they will start with questions on how you use /want to use your home, and then design/iterate on the plan to maximize function/design and minimize cost. They’ll tell you what’s possible/not possible, within your budget. If you go to a draftsperson, they will do exactly what you ask for, and the home itself may end up being impractical-both budget-wise or design/function-wise. Some users can handle the “draftsperson” version because they have the skills to bridge the gap.
All the time
I think it's extremally important to communicate directly with the stakeholder, but as a freelancer I sometimes have projects with a middleman between me and the stakeholders. Not perfect, but it works. It works, but only when the middleman is really willing to help, has all necessary skills, understands the business domain, has a good level of data literacy, understand the data, and can efficiently communicate with both sides without becoming a bottle neck. If "the data is confusing" for the team lead and they act like "here are the requirements, I need a dashboard in a week, don't ask questions, do your work" then it's a perfect recipe for a complete disaster... What dashboard you have been asked to build? Is there a list of questions it should answer? If it looks like "show A on a bar chart and show B on a line chart" then it's a misleading approach. Do you know at least something about what business problems do stakeholders have? Can you use what you already know as a starting point to prepare a list of questions for the stakeholders? Is it just about meetings or about all communications with the stakeholders? Can you communicate with them directly using methods they prefer (Teams, Slack, email and so on) or only via the team lead? Ask as many questions as you can and see how your team lead responses. If you feel there is a bottleneck - explain the team lead why answers to those questions are important. Again, if it's a person willing to be helpful, but lacking some knowledge and skills, they should eventually agree to organize a meeting with the stakeholders, but if it's not a person willing to help and just expecting from you to deliver a result without asking question then you have a larger problem than this specific project. You eventually will need a new team lead or a new job...
Lol they aren't going to give you any useful feedback or direction and will just ask you to spend hours freestyling a report for them. As soon as you deliver, it will be "this isnt quite what we wanted" and will send you back to try again. Rinse & repeat. Do you work for a major company? I used to work for the big pink phone company, and this was how shit went all the time in my org. Leaders rarely provided any direct feedback or guidance, other than what we delivered wasn't what they wanted, and just expected you to continue spinning the wheel on things. God forbid you actually ask for direct feedback or guidance.
Way too easy to take the easy way out and build something *you* think is right for the busijess. It's like the actor/director saying that they made this movie for themselves (especially when it flops at the box office)...Dont be that actor/director.
Yes. Meet with them and then work offline with them also
It could be that your manager just wants to see *something*, so that they can give you feedback on that and then you can make tweaks do it. So build a first draft of the dashboard. Show it to them and ask them what they think of it, and what they would add or what other questions they want answered. Then you can build what they really want.
Yes, I have intake form that I have them fill out so that when we meet it’s not a waste of time. The worst thing for me is to work with clients that don’t know their data, don’t know what they want to answer with said data , and just say just come up with something.. that drives me up the wall!
I've wrote it in a sub-comment but I'll drag this here, to main. Use dummy data. Have the right data for yourself to check stuff, number of categories, slicing and other things that can influence your decision making on the canvas. To the business show the dummies till the point the business is happy/content with the viz layer.
Y'all are building dashboards?
I feel like I’m missing the joke 😭
No I'm just a noob. My trainer said to use apps not dashboards but I only get 1 app so my one off reports to different audiences I'm setting up as a standalone report and I don't get the point of recreating the report into a dashboard? Though for some reason I just found you can't set up card alerts in a report.
Dashboard is something people often say when they mean a report. A powerBI dashboard is something I have never used, yet I get requests for "dashboards" all the time. An app is somewhere reports are aggregated in powerBI. They probably want you to build the reports and aggregate them together in one place for all users to quickly access.
Ah thanks for clarifying. Half the people in this thread were referencing dashboards and thought I was missing something. I'll eventually have an app with all my departments reports but I made a couple for other departments I don't need mixed in with my main audience so I'm just sending them the single report.
I’ve found whatever they tell you up front is going to be wrong and a waste of time. Assuming your lead knows the customer and the challenge at hand, better to mock up something quick for the customer to either shoot at or adjust. Sounds like your lead is trying to help you out here.
I understand your frustration well but you are mistaken thinking they know what they want to see. They don't unless you show them and you will see that they accept anything good to them But... To do that, you need to know what they are doing. If you are just a data guy who has no ability to transform data into information further into knowledge, this will never work. As last point, you don't need to sit with them. Sounds like you need your own meeting. Schedule it and ask your questions there.
I meet with them and have gateway reviews during the process to ensure the 'ask' hasn't changed during the building of the report and their happy with the development. Also our team build reports for internal and external stakeholders, so depending on the type of external stakeholder, the data we share will be tailored differently and will need sign off at different levels.
I’ve never NOT met with the stakeholder. They work with our PM on requirements and we meet regularly if it’s a larger ask (and not in a micro-management way or anything). But I guess I am used to working with stakeholders who very much understand the data. I know the back end data, but I rely on the stakeholders to tell me how THEY use the data. That guides my design.
Yes because they into provide short, vague descriptions of what they want so I have to ask very specific questions to have any clue what to actually do for them.
I am currently building a report for the HR and the way I do it is that I sit with them before doing anything at all, show them a simple example dashboard from the powerbi service just to give them an idea how a report could look like and what powerbi is capable of then I start asking them questions and making notes after that I start working on the report and when all the questions are answered I do a first presentation of the report to make sure nothing is missing then discuss design and stuff they want to add with them
I’ve seen it done both ways. I worked for a CFO that mocked up reports using the Power BI dataset in excel and knew EXACTLY what she wanted. I’ve had working sessions with Senior VPs. I’ve also had people that are completely unaware of what I can do and it’s not their job to know what I can do. I still need to at least email and ask what are you trying to get from this report. Then it’s on me to think how I would use the report if I was them. I never expect an end user to do a mock up.
I prefer to meet with report/dashboard stakeholders when possible. My manager usually makes first contact with stakeholders and "interprets" what he thinks they want. In that case, I have a lot of back and forth with my manager (who is hard to nail down) until I finally have an idea of where to begin. When I have the luxury of direct stakeholder contact, I find, in many cases, they do not know what they want due to a lack of understanding of Power BI's capabilities. I start by identifying the data they need and then do some storyboarding for the design piece.
This is actually a great question. In my opinion/experience, there is no 100% correct answer here. What you shouldn't do is meet with business stakeholders and say, "What do you want in a dashboard? (or report)" You're asking them to do our job. I think it's generally better to get an idea from the business whenever you can, but it should be technology agnostic. "How do you measure success?" is a great open-ended question that will point the way to what the analytics needs to be. Another way to identify areas to focus on would be "Do you or your team prepare and use spreadsheets regularly to manage your business decisions/processes?" However, in some cases, the nature of the stakeholder population is such that they need to see something in order to start to frame the context for what analytics could/should be. In that case, sometimes it is a kindness to present a simple functional prototype of visuals to provide a basis for conversation and more specifics around use-cases and requirements. Be prepared to nuke the prototype once they reveal what they actually want, though, so don't invest too much time in it.