Communicate status through dashboards

Communicating Status Through Tailored Dashboards
Dashboards are a powerful way to communicate the current operating status of your business in real-time, providing key metrics and visibility to different audiences. By creating dashboards tailored to the needs of specific groups, such as internal technical teams, leadership, and customers, organizations can ensure that the right information is presented in a clear and actionable way. Each dashboard should provide insights that are relevant to the audience, whether for operational troubleshooting, decision-making, or customer transparency.

Tailor Dashboards for Different Audiences

Create dashboards that are tailored to specific audiences to ensure the information presented is meaningful and actionable for each group:

• Internal Technical Teams: Dashboards for technical teams should focus on detailed system health metrics such as CPU and memory usage, error rates, resource utilization, response times, and the status of individual services. These dashboards help technical staff monitor system performance, detect anomalies, and troubleshoot issues effectively.
• Leadership and Executives: Dashboards for leadership should present a high-level view of the business impact and operational status. Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as uptime, availability, service-level objectives (SLOs), customer satisfaction scores, and incident status summaries provide executives with insights into overall service reliability and the impact on business outcomes.
• Customers and Stakeholders: Dashboards for customers should be simple, focusing on the current service status and any ongoing incidents. They may include service health, expected resolution times for issues, and updates on outages or maintenance activities. These dashboards help build trust and provide transparency, showing customers that their concerns are being addressed.

Communicate the Operating Status in Real Time

Ensure that dashboards provide a real-time view of the current operating status. Real-time data helps all stakeholders stay informed and take appropriate action based on the most current information available. Use automated data feeds and visualizations that are updated continuously to reflect the latest state of the workload.

Provide Metrics of Interest for Each Audience

Select metrics that align with the needs of each audience:

• Technical Teams: System health metrics, active alarms, system performance, logs, network traffic, database status, error rates, and alerting information.
• Leadership and Executives: High-level KPIs such as availability, response times, service-level agreements (SLAs) compliance, incidents per quarter, operational efficiency metrics, and customer satisfaction.
• Customers: Service uptime, current issues, impact, resolution progress, and planned maintenance schedules. These dashboards should focus on simplicity and transparency, providing a clear picture without overwhelming users with technical details.

Make Dashboards Interactive and Accessible

Make dashboards interactive where applicable to allow deeper investigation of data. Interactive features, such as filtering by time frame, service, or region, help technical teams troubleshoot issues quickly, while summary overviews help executives gain insights at a glance. Additionally, ensure that dashboards are accessible on multiple devices so that team members can check the status even when they’re not at their desks.

Centralize Access to Dashboards

Provide a centralized platform for accessing dashboards, such as a company portal or intranet. This makes it easy for each audience to access their respective dashboards quickly and ensures everyone has access to the latest information. For customers, use a status page that aggregates information in a way that is easily understandable and regularly updated.

Maintain Consistent Communication Through Dashboards

Use dashboards to maintain consistency in communication. Automate updates on these dashboards to prevent manual errors and ensure that information remains consistent across different communication channels. Dashboards should act as the single source of truth for operational status, keeping stakeholders and customers informed without conflicting information.

Supporting Questions

• How are dashboards tailored to provide relevant information for different audiences?
• What metrics are displayed on dashboards for technical teams, leadership, and customers?
• How are dashboards updated in real-time to ensure accurate communication?

Roles and Responsibilities

Monitoring Specialist
Responsibilities:

• Create and maintain dashboards for each audience, ensuring they present relevant metrics and are updated in real-time.
• Collaborate with internal teams to identify the most important metrics for each audience and adjust dashboard design accordingly.

Operations Manager
Responsibilities:

• Ensure that leadership and executive dashboards provide high-level KPIs that reflect overall operational health and business impact.
• Oversee customer-facing dashboards, ensuring they provide transparent and easily understandable service status information.

Customer Success Manager
Responsibilities:

• Review customer dashboards to ensure they provide a clear and accurate picture of the service status, helping build trust and transparency.
• Communicate updates regarding ongoing incidents or planned maintenance using dashboards as the primary source of information.

Artifacts

• Internal Operations Dashboard: A detailed dashboard for technical teams showing system performance metrics, active incidents, resource utilization, and alarms.
• Executive Summary Dashboard: A high-level dashboard for leadership with KPIs reflecting overall system health, uptime, availability, SLA compliance, and operational efficiency.
• Customer Status Page: A simplified status page providing service health, incident information, and ongoing updates for customers, focusing on transparency and ease of understanding.

Relevant AWS Tools

Monitoring and Dashboard Tools

• Amazon CloudWatch Dashboards: Creates custom dashboards that aggregate and visualize key metrics, providing an overview of system health, performance, and incidents for different audiences.
• AWS QuickSight: Provides advanced data visualization capabilities to create interactive dashboards for leadership, enabling deeper insights into operational metrics and business KPIs.

Communication and Status Tools

• AWS Systems Manager OpsCenter: Provides a centralized view of operational issues, aggregating data that can be used to populate dashboards for internal teams.
• Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service): Sends notifications based on changes in dashboard metrics, helping keep stakeholders informed during significant operational events.

Real-Time Data Integration Tools

• AWS IoT SiteWise: Gathers data from connected sources, allowing teams to visualize real-time operational metrics across dashboards.
• Amazon OpenSearch Service: Aggregates logs and metrics to create visualizations, supporting dashboards that help internal teams identify issues quickly.