Essay
From private spreadsheets to shared dashboards
Personal spreadsheets survive because they encode judgement: which outliers to ignore, which cohorts to merge, which weeks were weird. Shared dashboards fail when they copy the numbers but leave that judgement in someone’s head.
Inventory the tribal filters
Interview the spreadsheet owner. List every manual tweak. Some become documented transformations; some become footnotes; a few deserve to die. Do not automate a bad habit just because it is familiar.
Run dual publication briefly
For two or three cycles, publish both the sheet and the new view with a reconciliation note. Stakeholders learn the new shape while you catch silent formula differences. Stopping dual-run too early is a common cause of “we liked the old numbers better.”
Keep a readable archive
Export monthly snapshots of key views to a shared drive with stable filenames. Dashboards change; leadership sometimes needs last March’s exact chart during an audit or board prep.