An MBA 620 Module 6 dashboard analysis in full: the dashboard's purpose and audience, a table matching each visual to a decision question, three insights revealed by the visuals, data quality cautions and recommended refinements. Searches like "mba 620 module 6 assignment", "mba620 module 6 performance dashboard analysis" and "mba 620 module 6 example" land here.
The MBA 620 Module 6 example, in full
Seeing the Decision: A Performance Dashboard for a Regional Airline Acquisition
[Student Name]
Southern New Hampshire University
MBA 620: Measuring Success in an Organization
Module Six Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.
Seeing the Decision: A Performance Dashboard for a Regional Airline Acquisition
Purpose and Audience
The executive team at Meridian Airways, the composite mid-size carrier considering the purchase of Coastline Air or Prairie Connect, has received tables of financial ratios, operating measures and risk scores. Tables are complete but slow to read, and executives reviewing the decision in a thirty-minute meeting need to see the pattern quickly. The dashboard described here was built in a business intelligence tool from the same data, for one audience, the executive committee, and one purpose, to compare the two targets against Meridian on the measures in the acquisition scorecard. Dashboards support performance management best when they are designed around specific decisions rather than displaying everything available (Yigitbasioglu & Velcu, 2012).
Design Choices
Table 1 lists the dashboard's visuals and the question each answers.
Table 1
Dashboard Visuals and the Questions They Answer
| Visual | Chart type | Decision question |
|---|---|---|
| Unit economics | Scatter of cost versus revenue per available seat mile, one point per airline, with a break-even diagonal | Which airline earns the most on each seat it flies? |
| Reliability trend | Line chart of monthly on-time rate over three years for all three airlines, with an 80% target line | Is each airline's reliability improving or declining? |
| Workforce stability | Bar chart of pilot and mechanic turnover against a 12% threshold | Which workforce would be harder to integrate? |
| Financial strength | Bullet charts for operating margin and debt to equity against targets | Would the target strengthen or strain the combined balance sheet? |
| Scorecard summary | Small table of weighted scores by perspective | How do the candidates compare overall? |
| Risk heat map | Grid of likelihood versus impact with risks plotted for each target | Where are the risks concentrated? |
Note. Composite dashboard design.
Why These Chart Types
Each chart type was chosen to match the comparison being made. A scatter chart shows the relationship between two measures, so it suits unit cost and unit revenue, where the margin between them matters more than either alone. Line charts show change over time, which is why reliability appears as a trend rather than a single number. Bar charts compare magnitudes across categories, and bullet charts show a value against its target in a compact space. The design avoids three-dimensional effects, gauges and decorative color, following the principle that every mark on a chart should represent data (Tufte, 2001). Color is used only to distinguish the three airlines, consistently across all visuals, and to flag values that miss their targets, with a colorblind-safe palette so that every executive reads the same signal.
What the Dashboard Reveals
Three insights stood out once the data were charted. First, the unit economics scatter showed that Coastline sits lowest on cost but also lowest on revenue, while Prairie sits highest on both; Coastline's margin per seat mile is the larger of the two. Raising fuel costs with the tool's scenario slider moved Prairie toward the break-even line fastest, because its older, less fuel-efficient fleet burns more fuel per seat mile, a vulnerability the tables had not made obvious. Second, the reliability trend showed what the annual figure concealed: Coastline's on-time rate has fallen steadily for eleven consecutive quarters, while Prairie's has fluctuated around 83 percent without a trend. The single-year number made Coastline look adequate; the line made it look like a system under growing strain. Third, the workforce chart placed Coastline's turnover above the 12 percent threshold and Meridian's and Prairie's below it, which, next to the heat map showing labor integration as Coastline's highest risk, made the connection between workforce stability and integration risk visible at a glance.
Data Quality Cautions
A dashboard can make uncertain data look precise, so the executive version includes cautions. Target airlines' figures come partly from seller-provided due diligence materials that have not been fully audited. On-time data are drawn from public federal reports, which are reliable but define on-time as arriving within 15 minutes of schedule, a definition that can hide longer delays. Turnover figures for the targets are self-reported by their management. The dashboard therefore marks each visual with a data confidence label, and the scorecard summary shows ranges where inputs are uncertain. Good performance measurement systems are explicit about how each measure is defined and sourced (Neely et al., 1995).
How the Executive Team Will Use It
The dashboard is designed to be used in the meeting, not read beforehand. The chief executive will open with the scorecard summary so the committee sees the overall comparison first, then move to the visuals that explain it: unit economics to discuss profitability, the reliability trend to discuss operational risk and the workforce chart alongside the heat map to discuss integration. Each visual can be filtered to a single target, and hovering over any point shows the underlying figure and its source, so questions about a number can be answered without leaving the screen. After the decision, the same dashboard, with the acquired airline's data updated monthly, would become the integration monitoring tool, tracking whether reliability, turnover and unit costs move as the acquisition plan assumed. Keeping the same visuals from decision through integration helps leaders hold themselves accountable for the assumptions they made when approving the deal.
Recommended Refinements
Before the final decision meeting, the dashboard should add a pro forma view showing the combined airline's margin and debt ratio under each option, a route map highlighting overlapping routes that regulators may scrutinize, and a sensitivity panel allowing executives to change fuel prices and synergy assumptions and see the effect on each target. These additions would turn the dashboard from a description of the past into a tool for testing the future, which is what the executive committee needs from it.
One refinement should be resisted. Executives often ask for more measures once a dashboard exists, and each request seems reasonable on its own. Adding them would soon recreate the dense tables the dashboard replaced. Any new visual should therefore replace an existing one unless it answers a decision question the current set cannot, and the dashboard should stay on a single screen so that the pattern across measures remains visible at a glance.
References
Neely, A., Gregory, M., & Platts, K. (1995). Performance measurement system design: A literature review and research agenda. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 15(4), 80-116. https://doi.org/10.1108/01443579510083622
Tufte, E. R. (2001). The visual display of quantitative information (2nd ed.). Graphics Press.
Yigitbasioglu, O. M., & Velcu, O. (2012). A review of dashboards in performance management: Implications for design and research. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 13(1), 41-59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2011.08.002
How this MBA 620 Module 6 example is structured
The paper begins with the dashboard's purpose and audience, since design follows from who will use it and for what. A table describes each visual and the question it answers. The findings section explains what became visible only once the data were charted. The final sections address data quality and next steps.
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MBA 620 Module 6 questions, answered
What does MBA 620 Module 6 usually ask for?
Module 6 frequently involves analyzing financial and performance data with a business intelligence tool such as Power BI, building visualizations or a dashboard and interpreting what they show about the organization or the options in the course scenario.
What makes a good performance dashboard?
A good dashboard is designed for a specific audience and decision, shows a small number of relevant measures on one screen, uses chart types that match the comparison being made, highlights exceptions against targets and avoids decoration that distracts from the data.
Why use a scatter chart for cost and revenue per seat mile?
Plotting each airline's cost per available seat mile against its revenue per available seat mile shows both measures and the margin between them at once. Airlines above the diagonal line where revenue equals cost earn a positive unit margin, and the distance from the line shows how much.