For small projects and the early iterations of an agile BI project, a single dashboard and a few supporting reports may be sufficient. For many dashboard users, however, multiple dashboards with their own distinct reports are needed to adequately reflect the broader set of metrics they're responsible for. Both of these approaches, single dashboard, and multiple dashboards are geared towards a specific stakeholder or group of consumers, such as the vice presidents of sales group. Although these methodologies may meet the needs of their intended users, a potential risk is a lack of coordination across teams.

For example, business units would reference distinct metrics included in their dashboard and these metrics may not be included in the dashboards of senior managers or other business units.

To promote greater consistency and coordination across groups of users, BI teams can pursue an integrated, organizational dashboard architecture. In this approach, the same metrics and KPIs considered strategic for the organization are available in multiple dashboards specific to levels in an organizational hierarchy or distinct business units. The Global sales dashboard, described in the Dashboard design section earlier, represents this methodology as separate dashboards specific to individual sales territory groups that would include the same KPIs as the global dashboard. This approach ensures that dashboard tiles are relevant to the specific users and make it possible to analyze up and down a natural organizational hierarchy. Additionally, a common dashboard layout with integrated KPIs makes Power BI solutions much easier to manage with limited BI resources.