We come to work on Friday and play catch up on all our work that's been on hold. In the afternoon, we keep waiting for word from the manager's meeting, but nothing is sent across. Finally, around 5 o'clock, Calvin stops by.

"You two are officially rock stars. Everyone loved what you did. There were some uncomfortable moments after seeing some of the data points visualized, but that was the point of this project. I just wanted to update you real quick that we'll have a meeting on Monday about phase two. Management has lots of ideas."

9 o'clock Monday morning, we find ourselves in a conference room with Calvin, Sara, and a couple of other VPs and managers. Calvin starts to speak, "Good morning. I'm glad everyone is here. This is an exploratory meeting about phase two, the management dashboard. There were a lot of ideas thrown out during the meeting on Friday, and we wanted to take the time to distill those ideas down into something actionable. That's also why I invited the two developers who have worked on this project. I wanted their feedback on the best reporting options as we move forward."

Roshan, VP of Operations, speaks up, "We want to give our management team quick snapshots of where we stand. Pie charts will be good for this. I want to show how the percentage of revenue for each product category compares to the others. I also want a pie chart showing the divisional revenues as a percentage. Then, for each division, managers will see a pie chart with just their product categories."

Before we can interject, Jeff, VP of Information Systems, adds his comments. "From the IT side, we need a pie chart showing browser usage. Could it be one of those charts that looks like donut with the browsers listed on the outer ring and the versions are on the inner ring? This will help us as we move forward building our website and the features that we can offer. Many on the team believe we still need to support IE 7 and 8."

There is a lull in the conversation, so I take the chance to add my observations. "I think the idea of giving snapshots of the data is a great idea. I do have some reservations about using pie charts, though. In preparation for this meeting, I did some cursory research. The consensus is that pie charts are just bad in so many ways. I found several good articles by Steve Fenton on his blog, http://stevefenton.co.uk, discussing the different ways pie charts can incorrectly represent data."

Roshan tries to interrupt, but I continue, "There are chart types that are best used for certain types of data. We have already created a bar chart showing the revenue for each product category. We believe that a bar chart is better for comparing one product category to the other categories. Pie charts are really only good when comparing two or three categories. With eleven categories, the smallest pie pieces will be indistinguishable. Now, a pie chart of divisional revenues will be fine. There are only three divisions."

Roshan speaks again, "I appreciate your concerns, but we have already promised this to the management team. So, we just need to implement it." You and I share a look of resignation and fear. The meeting transitions into more business rules and logic.