So what is a dashboard? In a sentence it's a simple, easy to use, easy to understand, snap shot of the state of the nation (or in your case, state of your projects). So what goes into a dashboard? Well, the short answer is, it depends on your line of business. It could be detailed information like the number of defects per hour, the number of support calls in a day, or what is the general health of your projects. All the above are what are known as metrics or key performance indicators (KPI for short). I'm going to leave it at that, that metrics are a form of measurement of performance. Using my rule of three's, a couple of metrics that I personally like to include with my stakeholders are:

1. Schedule variance

2. Cost variance

3. Earned Value