Create a performance measurement dashboard

This topic describes how to create a dashboard to monitor performance metrics, a task in the Setting up a Performance Measurement System practice, in Rational Team Concert™.
Practices Tool Mentor This topic is similar to information that was previously found in Tool Mentors in the IBM Practice Library.

Before creating a performance management dashboard, a Jazz Team server must be set up and a Rational Team Concert project established on that server. If the dashboard needs to display data from more than one repository and the repositories are hosted on different Jazz Team servers, cross-server communication must be configured for all of the servers and you must have permission to access data on all of the servers. For more information about cross-repository dashboards, see About cross-repository dashboards.

Rational Team Concert capabilities can be used to measure and monitor a large number of lower-level activities using metrics that can provide insight about the effectiveness of practices.

To create a dashboard to monitor performance, you must perform the following steps:

Determine goals of the dashboard

Before you can create an effective performance measurement dashboard, you must decide what purpose it is intended to address and how it will do that. Without this information, you cannot be sure that you are showing the right data or that it will help the intended users by supplying them with information that they need.

To keep dashboards focused and organized, use separate dashboards for different purposes. For example, if you choose to focus on a specific set of operational objectives, create one dashboard for that purpose. If you also want to focus on a set of practice-based objectives, then create a separate dashboard for that purpose.

The following issues should be considered:

Determine how dashboard will address goals

When you are confident that you understand the goals of the dashboard, you need to specify how the dashboard will meet them. There are a variety of viewlets that you can display on a dashboard, such as reports, Web pages, RSS feeds, and so on. Reports (the primary channel for metrics information) can be charts, small tables, cross tabulations, or trend indicators, for example.

Decide whether you want to create a team, project or personal dashboard. Each team or project can have one public dashboard associated with it, and that dashboard is automatically viewable by members of the respective team and/or project areas. A team or project dashboard can also be edited by team or project members whose assigned process roles have permission to edit. Personal dashboards are private by default, but can be shared with a team or project area so that members can view the dashboard but not edit it.

Generally, a dashboard presents information that is intended to convey high-level concepts quickly without distracting you with details that you may not need. Essentially, you should be able to grasp the meaning of the data at a glance. Providing low-level, detailed data at the top level can take up too much space. Screen real estate is limited, so reports must be small. Charts and trend indicators are generally more effective than data tables for achieving this goal. For access to more detailed information, you can use reports that have drill-down capabilities so that you can choose to look at more granular data if you need it. Rational Team Concert comes with a variety of report templates that allow for drill-down.

To make the dashboard easier to view, try to arrange the page to avoid scroll bars when the dashboard is viewed in a typically sized window. Some necessity of vertical scrolling is usually acceptable, but horizontal scrolling is more of an imposition on users.

Choose reports to display metrics

When you have specified what you want to display in the dashboard, you are ready to construct it. Reports that display the information you need may already be available. To explore available reports, perform step 1 in Adding a viewlet. If the reports that you need are available in the viewlet chooser, you can skip to the next step: Create and configure the dashboard. If the reports you need are not available, you can modify existing report templates or you can create new report templates, then deploy the templates to the project.

Before attempting to create a new report template, check the sample report templates supplied with Rational Team Concert. There are many report templates that may supply exactly what you need or something similar. A list of available report templates is included in the Rational Team Concert help (Available reports and templates). Only report templates that have micro versions can be displayed on the dashboard. Generally, it is simpler to create a report from an existing report template than to create a new template, so look for one that is relatively close.

To create new reports that can be displayed on the dashboard, follow the instructions in How To Add New Dashboard Trend Reports in RTC 2.0 .

Create and configure the dashboard

Verify that you can log into the project with which you plan to associate the dashboard using the Jazz Web client.

  1. Using the Web client, log in to the Jazz Team server on which you want to host the dashboard..
  2. To create the dashboard and edit the title, follow the steps in Creating a dashboard for the appropriate dashboard type (team, project, or personal). If you create a personal dashboard that you want other members of the project or team area to view, you must share it: Sharing a dashboard.
  3. Add viewlets (report viewlets that display metrics of interest), specify any necessary parameters, and configure dashboard content by performing the steps in the Adding and organizing content on a dashboard section.

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