Spotifyhas recently unveiled their Dashboard Quality Framework, a standardized approach aimed at ensuring the accuracy and consistency ofdashboards across the organization. This framework underpins their internal Dashboard Portal, enabling users to easily search for existing dashboards throughout the organization.
Skyler Johnson, asenior data scientist at Spotify, explained the rationale behind the Dashboard Quality Framework. He emphasized that creating effective dashboards requires specialized skills and acknowledged the challenges of maintaining quality standards ina distributed work environment. The initiative primarily addresses challenges related to dashboard creation and accessibility.
The Dashboard Portal consolidates content from multiple tools, eliminating the need for users to worry about where dashboards are located. Furthermore, embedded dashboards are equipped with additional context, including ownership, refresh dates, usage statistics, and underlying queries, providing a deeper understanding of the data.
At Spotify, both Tableau and Looker Studio are available, allowing each employee to choose the solution that best suits their needs, creating tailored and effective visualization experiences. Looker Studio offers quick and user-friendly visualization capabilities, while Tableau provides the depth and complexity required for intricate dashboards.
The Dashboard Quality Framework comprises two components:
- Vital Signs: An automated check of dashboard health based on API and log data.
- Spicy DesignDashboard Checklist: A manual evaluation of data visualization and design best practices.
Dashboards are assigned a quality label (low, high, or gold) based on their performance in these assessments.
To assist Tableau users, Spotify has developed a service for creating and managing Tableau extracts. This service leverages SQL scheduling tools toschedule and execute batch data workflows in Google BigQuery. It also generates and publishes Tableau .hyper files for dashboards on Tableau Cloud. These workflows execute BigQuery SQL upon meeting dependencies, offering benefits such as faster processing speeds, greater data loading capacity, and easier editing through .yaml-based SQL storage.
Beyond the technical aspects, Spotifyalso prioritizes support for dashboard owners. The company provides resources and training to help owners understand and maintain the quality of their dashboards. This includes guidance on data governance, best practices for data visualization, and tools for collaboration and communication.
Spotify’s Dashboard Portal and Quality Framework represent a significant step towards fostering a data-drivenculture within the organization. By prioritizing quality, accessibility, and user experience, Spotify empowers its employees to make informed decisions based on reliable and readily available data.
References:
- Unlock Insights with High-Quality Dashboards at Scale (Spotify Blog)
- Spotify’s Dashboard Quality Framework: A Case Studyin Data Governance (InfoQ)
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