Visualizing the status of telecommunication networks with dashboards

Abstract: Background: KPIs/PIs (Key Performance Indicators/Performance Indicators) are types of indicators that are of importance to stakeholders in order for the strategic goals of the organisation to be met. When visualizing datasets, displaying right KPI/PI for the right stakeholder is important, otherwise he/she cannot act on the given information. Purpose: To develop and evaluate the effectiveness of using dashboards as a visualization tool for KPI/PI values for a telecommunication network. Research Method: Design research was used for this thesis. To validate the results two prototypes of visualization solutions were developed and interviews were conducted to evaluate the usefulness of the visualization solutions. Results: The research yielded in six dashboards visualizing the status of a telecommunication network, three of which visualized a test network, and three of which visualized real data from the field. Conclusions: It is an appropriate solution to visualize KPI/PI values using dashboards. Dashboards could be made more useful in certain situations by introducing drilldown features. Developing dashboards using Dashing-js is a quick and efficient way to visualize the status of telecommunication networks.