Optional project

In order to enrich your learning experience, you have the choice of building a dashboard in Tableau to communicate the insights from your analysis. This gives you the opportunity to apply the theory you have learnt practically to a particular business scenario. The submission of this project is not compulsory and therefore does not count towards your final course grade. As you engage in the optional project tasks throughout the course, you could use the opportunity to give and receive feedback from your peer learning community on these tasks.

Initially for this optional project, you’ll create some visualisation in Excel and then you’ll move into some fancier ways to present and communicate using Tableau.

The completion of this project is broken up into a series of tasks designed to help you gain the skills needed to perform your analysis. As you engage in these optional project tasks throughout the course, you could use this opportunity receive feedback for your tasks from your peer learning community.

You’ll find a summary of these tasks further down the page, but first, let’s check out what you’ll be working towards.

During this course, you’ll create an operational dashboard in Tableau and develop a strategy to roll out this dashboard within an organisation. The information below describes the scenario for the assessment, provides the data you’ll be working with, and outlines the deliverables.

Don’t panic if this seems overwhelming or some of the subject-specific terms don’t make sense immediately.

Throughout this course, you’ll complete a series of tasks designed to help you develop your:

• dashboard in Tableau,
• document your design decisions,
• prepare a strategy to roll out the dashboard.

Around these tasks, you’ll have opportunities to get formative feedback on your work through reflective questions, peer review activities, and discussions with your fellow learners. You’ll find a summary of these tasks further down the page, but first, let’s check out what you’ll be working towards for your assessment.

Project scenario

You’ve just been hired as a junior data analyst by a company that specialises in last-minute weekend flights in the USA. For your first project, your manager has asked you to investigate some historical data about domestic flight delays. Someone else has analysed and prepared some data for you and has asked that you prepare a dashboard to communicate insights.

After successfully completing an exploratory analysis and providing insights about common flight delays from Los Angeles International (LAX), your manager has asked you to develop a dashboard for the business’s customer service and customer success teams. The teams have been crying out for a way to monitor and predict flight delays so they can send proactive communication to help manage customer expectations.

You have agreed to create a proof-of-concept dashboard, using the historical flight data, and you will deliver this alongside a report. The report will explain some key features of the dashboard and propose a strategy to roll it out to the customer service and customer success teams. Your manager has given you a little over six weeks to complete this.

Given the tight timeline, a fellow analyst offered to help out and has done the hard work of preparing the data for you. As you’re developing a proof-of-concept, you both elected to focus on flights arriving and departing from a single airport. This time you picked Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL). Due to its location, ATL is one of the busiest airports in North America and serves as the hub for Delta Airlines.

The analyst has extracted information about all the weekend flights arriving and departing ATL. This data now covers the primary travel times for your customers. This is limited to flights departing from 5 p.m. Friday and scheduled to arrive at their destination before 7 a.m. Monday morning.

Accessing the data

You’ll find a ZIP file containing the ATL flight data at the bottom of the page. This ZIP file also contains a README document that describes the different fields within the data set.

Creating a dashboard

Creating your dashboard involves identifying and developing a series of visualisations that will support the customer service and customer success teams and help inform their decision-making.

You’ll need to arrange your visualisations into a single operational dashboard that presents a holistic picture and also allows either team to isolate the information that’s relevant to them. In addition to this, you’ll apply and visualise a predictive model to support decision-making and take steps to ensure your dashboard and visualisations are suitable for a range of users.

As you work through the course, you’ll find a series of tasks designed to help you complete components of your dashboard:

• In Course 1, you’ll familiarise yourself with the data and select appropriate visualisations
• In Course 2, you’ll create charts and complex visualisations in Tableau
• In Course 3, you’ll design and develop your dashboard, using existing visualisations and adding new ones as needed. You’ll also add some interactive features. Then you’ll adjust elements of your dashboard to meet accessibility requirements and investigate different storytelling options.

Developing a strategy

Adoption is key, so as part of your strategy, you’ll need to justify your dashboard design decisions and decide how you will roll it out to the customer service and customer success teams. You’ll need to develop a plan to deploy the dashboard and identify how you would support these teams to incorporate it into their workflows.

As with the dashboard, you’ll find tasks to help you complete this throughout the course:

• In Course 1, you’ll start preparing and tidying up the data
• In Course 2, you’ll create complex visualisations in Tableau
• In Course 3, you’ll document the design of your dashboard as you prototype solutions and evaluate the designs of your fellow learners, and you’ll decide your approach for deploying the dashboard.

Questions?

As we said earlier, don’t panic if this seems overwhelming. The course has been developed to help you complete both components of the assessment as you go. If you have any immediate questions about the assessment at this point, pop them in the comments below for your fellow learners and facilitators to respond.