Most dashboards get built backwards. Someone asks for "a Power BI report," and six hours laterMost dashboards get built backwards. Someone asks for "a Power BI report," and six hours later
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Ashmal Irshad
• Jul 12
Most dashboards get built backwards.
Someone asks for "a Power BI report," and six hours later they get 12 charts, 40 filters, and zero answers to the question they actually had.
I spent last summer inside a bank's data team (TransPecos Bank) watching this happen — and fixing it. The projects that actually got used by leadership weren't the ones with the most charts. They were the ones that answered one specific question clearly: where is money getting wasted, and why.
That's the lens I bring to every dashboard now — start with the decision someone needs to make, then build backward into the data.
A few things I've built this into: → A regression model that flagged where operating costs were quietly outpacing asset utilization → SQL pipelines that turned scattered transaction data into one clean reporting view → Dashboards small business owners could actually open on a Monday and know what to do next
I'm opening up a few spots to build this kind of dashboard for small businesses, banks, and real estate teams who are stuck staring at spreadsheets instead of answers.
If that's you — or you know someone drowning in data with no time to make sense of it — send me a message. Happy to look at what you've got and tell you honestly whether a dashboard would actually help, no pitch.
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