Behind the Scenes: Dashboards That Deliver

Andy Cotgreave, Amanda Makulec, Jeffrey Shaffer, and Steve Wexler have a new book coming out on September 23, 2025—Dashboards That Deliver: How to Design, Develop, and Deploy Dashboards That Work. I was lucky enough to be asked to review the book in advance of its release and, after reading it cover to cover, wondered how exactly four people with vastly different professional experiences came together to write such a fantastic book. The authors were gracious enough to sit down with me for a conversation about their process, so here’s what I learned:

1. Having four authors does not mean the book gets written four times as fast

Throughout our conversation, the topic of the sheer size of the author team came up a number of times. I asked explicitly about their experience working together because much of the book sounded like a single voice, not four. In response, Amanda said:

“You mentioned the kind of unified language, that it actually reads like a book that’s not written by four different people, despite having different authors on chapters. I think that took a lot of honing. I think we learned in the initial drafting process and my drafting content for Part I, that I write in very verbose prose that I really appreciate reading, but my co-authors are much more adept at writing for more business audiences. And so, that’s one of the reasons Andy and I collaborated on the first part, was him working with me on taking some of the big ideas and long sentences and helping to make sure that the content was accessible for folks who are reading the book and who might be skimming through it or looking for insights in bits.”

2. Disagreement is healthy, and sometimes it’s important to show it

With four authors, disagreement is inevitable. I asked the authors about how they handled those disagreements behind the scenes, and how they decided to put some of them on the page. Andy talked about how debates during the making of The Big Book of Dashboards (authored by Andy, Jeffrey, and Steve) resulted in them starting Chart Chat, to which they later invited Amanda. That experience helped prepare them for making Dashboards That Deliver, he said:

“There are challenges because you add one more person to the group, but that actually creates many more vertexes of disagreement and logistics. So it was a challenge, but you know, like in the first book, you end up with a better product, because even before anything gets to Wiley or a copy editor, it’s already gone through a painful process with the other three authors. So, even though it might have been difficult, we were always working to improve the end product. So, a challenging but fruitful process.”

Jeffrey also talked about how working together on previous projects helped him and his co-authors navigate disagreements:

“I think this would have been a lot harder had we come together, not working together, right? We worked together for years: Steve and Andy on the first book, and then Amanda on Chart Chat for, you know, years and years and years. So we work together on a regular basis. I know them, I trust them, you know? I respect them and their work. I think that really helps, especially when you get into a disagreement or something that’s really difficult.”

Steve mentioned how he appreciated the fresh perspectives his authors brought to the table, even when they were different from his:

“It’s good to have someone else reading the stuff that someone else has written, you know? Because, gee, this stuff’s so clear to me! I don’t need a figure here, I don’t need an illustration, I don’t need a call-out to accentuate the most important point, because I’m living and breathing it and thinking about it 24/7. Someone else reading it goes, ‘this isn’t clear, wait a minute, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’”

3. Authors really do think about how readers will use their book

I’ve always been told “think about your audience!” when taking writing courses, but was curious whether that was something real authors actually did when writing their books. Well, the authors of Dashboards That Deliver certainly did! Amanda talked about how the book is designed to be read in multiple ways:

“I think one of the best parts of the book is you can sit down and read it cover to cover if you want to, or you can pick and choose and read pieces of it. I hope it becomes a reference book that people have that, when they’re doing dashboard design work and they’re getting to their kind of prototyping and kind of layout design pieces, they can pop open the book and open that chapter and be reminded of some ideas. Or they’re looking for an example of a really great dashboard around financial data, and they can go pop open the big banking dashboard scenario. And so, I think that that was a big part of getting to a really accessible book—which we hope it is for a lot of people across different levels—to make sure that it reads as an accessible book and has lots of good examples, and can be read modularly or cover to cover.”

Andy pointed out how the framework for designing dashboards described throughout Part I of the book can be used for many applications outside of dashboards:

“I think the framework that Amanda’s come up with, and that we’ve obviously worked through the whole front section of the book, is focused on dashboards, but it is a data application design framework, right? You know, that framework took inspiration from Design Double Diamond, from Agile, from user-centered design, you know? Those are paradigms that are not dashboard-specific. So when you get into things like user stories and wireframing and prototyping, you’re just in application design. So we’ve framed it within a dashboard world, but, you know, that framework is applicable to anybody who’s trying to take data and to produce something that other people are going to use with data. This is a book for them.”

4. Even 500 pages can’t capture everything

I asked the authors about what was left on the cutting room floor when Dashboards That Deliver was finalized. Could there really be more than the nearly 500-page book? Turns out, there could be much more, but they didn’t feel having a thicker book was the most productive course of action. Steve reflected on their tool-agnostic approach to the book:

“The book is already fairly thick. And if we had something about, ‘and here’s how you make all these things in each of these tools,’ it would be 10,000 pages long. So, it’s wonderful for people who teach Tableau, people who teach PowerBI, because it will create this need for, ‘oh, you need to be adept in your tool? Here are these people who are great at it, and they’ll teach you, and they’ll help you with it.’ So, that’s where the frustration comes from. We’re not going to tell you, step by step, how to build this thing. We make it very clear, we’re not going to tell you how to do that. We can’t—there’s too many tools.”

In a similar vein, there were hundreds of real world projects and scenarios to choose from for the book. Ultimately, only so many could make the final draft and be useful to readers without too much overlap. Jeffrey addressed their process for deciding what stayed in:

“The list was probably twice as long, both on scenarios and real world examples. We had a long, long list of real world, and they just started getting cut. Some of them combined themselves. We said, ‘oh, that might fit with this chapter,’ and kind of moved in and combined. Some of them were written all the way to the 11th hour, and didn’t make it, and got cut, and didn’t make enough sense to have in the book. And some of them we felt like they just, you know, weren’t the right topic, or just didn’t make it.”

Behind the Scenes of *Dashboards That Deliver*. (Source: Amanda Makulec)

After chatting with Andy, Amanda, Jeffrey, and Steve, I have an even greater appreciation for the hard work and dedication it took to create Dashboards That Deliver. Even though I don’t make dashboards often, I definitely see myself referencing the book regularly as I complete other data visualization projects. If you want even more behind the scenes information about Dashboards That Deliver, you can check out the authors’ discussion of some of the book’s inner workings on Chart Chat 57: Under the Cover of Dashboards that Deliver.

Dashboards That Deliver is currently available for preorder and will publish on September 23, 2025.

Emilia Ruzicka

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Emilia Ruzicka is a data journalist, researcher, and editor who recently completed their M.A. in Media, Culture, and Technology at University of Virginia. They are currently pursuing freelance projects, including a blog and travel newsletter, while they search for their next full-time position. Outside of data viz, Emilia loves to visit museums, make art, and talk about the USPS. If you have a project proposal, story tips, or want to find out more, visit emiliaruzicka.com.