Specimen · catalogued monster

The Dashboard Necromancer

Keeps refreshing reports nobody has opened since 2019

A devoted keeper of the dead, it tends a vast crypt of charts with candles that never go out. Ask it to retire a single report and it will clutch the server to its chest, hissing that a meeting might one day need it.

Symptoms

• Thousands of reports, most rarely opened
• Duplicate dashboards answering the same question
• Refresh, licence and support costs for dead content
• Users can't find the right report
• Every request becomes a new dashboard

Overheard in the corridor

• “Just build me a dashboard for it.”
• “Don't delete that one, someone might need it.”
• “We've got a dashboard for that. Actually, we've got eleven.”
• “We spend more time maintaining reports than answering questions.”