Lighting up “Fermidash” – Fermilab’s Executive Dashboard NLIT 2012

Agenda Explain the background, purpose, and objectives related to the Executive Dashboard (“FermiDash”) Review a high level overview of the architecture and tools being used Describe the approach for completing the project Highlight the dashboard features and functions Share lessons learned Present the future phases and what they will deliver NLIT 2012 FermiDash

About “FermiDash” Background Purpose Fermi Research Alliance (FRA), Fermilab’s prime contractor, committed to providing an Executive Dashboard (“FermiDash”) in its contract with the Department of Energy.  Over the past year, a team of Fermilab’s staff and contractors implemented the first phase of FermiDash. Purpose The purpose of this project is to display crucial information in a clear and concise manner for making key decisions. The primary audience is Fermilab’s senior management, the Department of Energy, and the FRA board. Over the past year the team implemented the first phase of FermiDash.  This phase included: Implementing the infrastructure Publishing a set of dashboards with key performance indicators (KPIs) that display statistics about the Laboratory’s: business areas management systems contractor assurance systems The operational structure to continue adding content and features as required for use in future phases.   NLIT 2012 FermiDash

About “FermiDash” Objectives To meet the contractual obligation for a management decision dashboard. We met this object ive by completing Phase 1 by the end of CY 2011 To provide a visualization of the lab’s key performance indicators (KPIs). This is an ongoing process, but there is much progress and momentum NLIT 2012 FermiDash

Architecture Primarily based on Microsoft (MS) Platforms MS SharePoint Enterprise Edition PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer Excel Services Visio Services Integrated Reporting Services Site Collections to aggregate dashboards and KPIs into “FermiDash” MS SQLServer Database Provides data storage for cubes and data marts SQLServer Reporting Services (SSRS) – Displays data via reports and KPIs SQLServer Integration Services – Moves data from source data stores to data mart for use in Dashboards, KPIs, and Reports SQLServer Analysis Services(SSAS) - Delivers online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining functionality CUBE = cube aggregates the facts in each level of each dimension in a given OLAP schema. The business intelligence industry uses the word "cube" because it best describes the resulting data. For example, let's consider our star schema. When you create a cube from that schema, you take the freight, quantity, discount, and other facts and add them up by city, by year, by city and year, and by every other possible combination of dimension and hierarchy level. Those calculations produce the following type of data structure: DATAMART The data mart is a subset of the data warehouse which is usually oriented to a specific business line or team. facts and dimensions NLIT 2012 FermiDash

Architecture A wide array of back end data stores that contain source data Oracle databases of Financial, HR, Safety data SharePoint lists containing data that was not already available in databases Excel spreadsheets that had been used prior to the Dashboard being available Web Pages NLIT 2012 FermiDash

NLIT 2012 FermiDash

Approach Wanted to leverage existing SharePoint and SQL Server platforms Bring in business intelligence experts with Microsoft specific skill sets to accelerate the project Provide a solid infrastructure Work on “low-hanging fruit” dashboards. Meaning dashboards that can be derived from existing data sources and/or manually created reports. NLIT 2012 FermiDash

There are eleven management system areas Business Operations Communications Corporate Governance Engineering ES&H Finance Information Technology Performance Planning Quality Science Stakeholder Relations NLIT 2012 FermiDash

FermiDash – Welcome Page NLIT 2012 FermiDash

FermiDash – Business Operations (1) NLIT 2012 FermiDash

Fermidash – Bus. Ops. – HR - Balanced Score Card(1.1) NLIT 2012 FermiDash

FermiDash – Communications (2) NLIT 2012 FermiDash

FermiDash – Corporate Governance (3) NLIT 2012 FermiDash

FermiDash – Engineering (4) NLIT 2012 FermiDash

FermiDash – ES&H (5) NLIT 2012 FermiDash

FermiDash – ES&H – Traffic (5.1) NLIT 2012 FermiDash

FermiDash – Finance (6) NLIT 2012 FermiDash

FermiDash – Information Technology (7) NLIT 2012 FermiDash

FermiDash – Performance Planning (8) NLIT 2012 FermiDash

FermiDash – Quality (9) NLIT 2012 FermiDash

FermiDash – Science (10) NLIT 2012 FermiDash

Fermilab – Science – Detector Performance (10.1) NLIT 2012 FermiDash

FermiDash – Stakeholder Relations (11) NLIT 2012 FermiDash

“Baseball Card” Display These are used to provide a visual menu to the various dashboards available. They make finding information quicker and easier. NLIT 2012 FermiDash

Lessons Learned Leveraging a full service consulting firm seems to provide greater value and less risk than relying on a single expert Reports that appear to have been generated based on existing data, may not be based on the data, and/or may need to have extra processing to achieve desired format or message. Needed to provide structure to capture and store data that was only available in documents, presentations, or spreadsheets. Data owners needed reassurance that providing the data and support for the system was not going to come back to haunt them. Changing peoples frame of reference from Reports to Dashboards can differ based on each person. B2 = Meaning that just because we found a report doesn’t mean it was generated from a backend data store. It might have been hand generated. So, we needed to also build a way to capture the data in a way that could be used with the dashboard. NLIT 2012 FermiDash

Future Direction More Automation Better systems for collection, storing data Migrate reports and basic dashboards to dashboards using more advanced dashboard capabilities Provide more granular levels of role based security Add more content (dashboards, KPIs, Reports, etc.) Provide ability to analyze data Provide data, KPIs, reports to lower level managers B3 = Some of the current dashboards are fairly “reportish” there is a desire to make these more visual and easy to understand macro level status. NLIT 2012 FermiDash

Conclusion Questions Comments Discussion NLIT 2012 FermiDash