Power BI

What do German Telekom, Credit Suisse, Swiss Post, German Armed Forces, and SAP have in common? They are all following the seven HICHERT®SUCCESS Rules in their financial reports. In Part 1 of this blog,

Today, more and more people realize there is more to data storytelling than just data visualization. If you were to evaluate what makes a data story "good," you'd discover one crucial ingredient that's necessary--a meaningful insight. In this article, I review what insights are and the critical role they play in data stories. I also share thoughts from a recent journal article by Sorin Adam Matei and Lucas Hunter on the importance of insights to data storytelling in science communication and data journalism.

Data literacy is a key focus of many organizations as they seek to help their employees take full advantage of their data. While data storytelling is often included in data literacy training, the question is whether it is a required skill to be data literate. In this article, I explore the minimum viable skills someone needs to qualify as being data literate. I then share where data storytelling fits in the data literacy landscape.

The most common way of sharing data with employees has been through dashboards and reports, but they mainly focus on the 'what.' What executives really crave is the 'why'--interpreting the numbers to help inform decisions. A recent survey reveals how data stories can address this crucial need.

Forrester reports 74% of firms say they want to be “data-driven,” but only 29% are actually successful at connecting analytics to action. Actionable insights are the missing link for companies that want to drive business outcomes from their data. This article defines six key attributes that make insights truly actionable.

To become an effective data storyteller, you must shift your mindset from being reporting centered to embracing a different storytelling approach. In this article, I introduce the Insight Funnel and how reports/dashboards complement data stories. Then I explore the six key approach differences between reports/dashboards and data stories.

According to a NewVantage Partners survey, 99% of firms have invested in data initiatives and 92% reported the pace of investment is accelerating. However, only 24% reported having a data-driven organization. This article looks at 10 reasons why your company may not have achieved this goal yet.

In today's data economy, the word 'insight' is used frequently in business. However, in many cases, it is misused without a clear understanding what the word means. We need to enhance insight literacy, which starts with developing a clearer definition of what insights really are.

A good way to think of data visualization (data viz) is that it can be the difference between utter confusion and really grasping an issue.

Many managers are uncomfortable with interpreting the numbers in their reports and dashboards. If this common data literacy problem isn't addressed across management levels, companies will continue to struggle in their efforts to develop data-driven cultures. In this article, I cover four key areas of data interpretation that are essential for all managers who are striving to make data-informed decisions.

I was listening to Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic interviewing Steven Franconeri a few days ago (excellent episode!) and I was struck by something they mentioned towards the end regarding the illusion of being neutral when visualizing data. Many seem reticent to editorialize their data visualizations for fear of being perceived as biased. Cole was mentioning strategies she advocates for that bring more clarity and focus but necessarily leads to more direct steering of the reader’s attention from the visualization designer’s side (highlighting, annotations, simplification, etc.)

Show full category text on Y-axis of a bar chart in Power BI

When Personalize Visuals is too personalized: an experiment in switching displayed charts using a dimension attribute.

I recently worked on two projects where the client wanted to show multiple metrics sliced by the same categorical data. For example, seeing how various metrics are performing over different…

Creating custom visuals using the Charticulator in Power BI is not easy. So here are some some Charticulator resources I've used to skill up.

Normalizing conditional formatting bars in Power BI is not easy, but can be done with a measure and a calculation group. No more bars covering the values.

Presenting data with empathy and context leads business users to better decision-making.

Data literacy is the ability to read, understand, and use data to drive decisions. Find your data literacy persona by taking this assessment.

Creating a calendar is not as complicated as you think. It requires some creativity and you could achieve it too.

Its about the clusters. I have created a scatter chart with the measure of Profit Margin and Revenue of y and x axis respectively.

Work: 17th Century Watercolors

For more formal enterprise Power BI development, many people have a checklist to ensure data acquisition and data modeling quality and performance. Fewer people have a checklist for their data visu…

Perhaps you would like to share your Custom Power BI visual with others online or collaborate during the development of a custom Visual. In that case, it's useful to run your visual project in Codesandbox.io so you can share your visual across platforms, like f.e. medium.   In this article, I will e...

As a data visualization tool, Power BI provides rich visualization, self-service functionalities, as well as the ability to embed Power BI reports into your organization’s applications—a feature that …

O'Reilly Resources

Why are some visualizations so easy to understand at first sight while others seem to be some sort of graphical puzzle? Why do some visualizations need to be relearned every time you see them again, whereas others need only one simple initial exposure?

Reflections on my frustration teaching data visualization without focusing on effective data-driven thinking

Three concepts from visual perception that can help you think better about clarity and aesthetics