Reconciling an Executive Dashboard Before a Board Meeting
A PMO at a 900-person consultancy runs 12 client project boards. Each board has a Status column with On Track, At Risk, Delayed, and Done; a Timeline; a Numbers column for budget; and a People column for project lead. The COO's dashboard has a Battery widget for status, a Chart widget for budget by lead, and a Numbers widget counting open projects. On Monday morning the COO sees 38 At Risk projects on the Battery widget, but the PMO's board view shows 31. The Chart widget shows $4.2M budget while finance says $3.7M. One widget is blank for a new region. The dashboard is shared with 15 viewers, 5 of whom are guests and cannot open two source boards. The PMO has 30 minutes before the exec meeting. Dashboard filters are set to this quarter; board views use saved filters for active projects.
1. Diagnose the three discrepancies: the At Risk count, the budget total, and the blank region widget. What would you check first?
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Start with filter context. The dashboard filter (this quarter on Timeline) applies across widgets and combines with any widget-level filter; the board view has a saved active-projects filter. That alone can explain 38 versus 31. Next check item population: Battery widgets count items by status, but some projects may exist as subitems or be archived, and a widget may include one group while the board view excludes it. For budget, check the Chart widget aggregation: Sum versus Count, whether the budget column is a formula or mirror, and whether duplicate or cross-currency items are included. Also check whether finance excludes a business unit. The blank region widget is likely a permissions symptom: dashboard widgets respect the viewer's access to source boards, so a guest without access sees no data rather than an error. Verify with a test viewer account.
2. Redesign the reporting layer so the COO's numbers are defensible. What would you build, and what would you stop doing?
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Stop pointing executive widgets directly at 12 independently maintained boards. Build a portfolio board that connects to each project board, with mirrored status, budget, lead, and timeline fields, and a documented metric definition for each widget. Standardize templates so status labels and budget currency are consistent. Use one dashboard-level filter for period and region, and avoid hidden widget filters unless they are labeled. Separate subitem reporting into its own widget if subitems represent workstreams. Add a Numbers widget as a reconciliation check, not just a headline. Lock editing on the executive dashboard, assign an owner, and run a pre-meeting validation checklist: source board count, archived items, duplicate IDs, and permissions. Keep the detailed board views for operators; the dashboard should answer a defined question, not mirror every board.
3. The five guest viewers need to see project health but must not access all source boards. What are the viable options and their risks?
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Do not grant guests access to every source board just to make widgets populate. Option one: create a sanitized client-facing portfolio board with only non-sensitive mirrored fields and share that board with guests; point dashboard widgets at it. Risk: mirrored data is only as fresh as the connection, and guests may see fields you forgot to exclude. Option two: keep the executive dashboard internal and give guests a separate dashboard sourced from client-specific boards. Risk: duplicate maintenance. Option three: use monday's sharing settings for a view-only dashboard, but remember widget data still respects board permissions, so blank widgets may persist. Test with a guest account, document data classification, and prefer least privilege. If a guest must see one client's projects, invite them only to that client's board, not the workspace.