Launching the Sport Wales Governance dashboard – how we worked and what made it a success!

2025-09-07

Owain Morris's Picture

By Owain Morris

In November 2025, Sport Wales launched the live version of its new Governance Dashboard. Looking back, this blog reflects on the work needed to achieve this and the key things that helped make the project a success – from my perspective as project manager and as part of a wider project team.

The Purpose of the Sport Wales Governance Dashboard

Before this project, to access governance data, Sport Wales staff would need to speak to the owners of several different documents. There was no central place to quickly check something.

The new dashboard provides:

By turning complex information into something accessible and usable, the dashboard plays an important role in strengthening Sport Wales' governance of the sector.

# put image here A screenshot of the governance dashboard in PowerBI

Screenshots of the dashboard. Contact Tom Jolly from the Governance Team for more information.

The success of the Sport Wales Governance Dashboard was not accidental. It was built on clear and prioritised requirements, a realistic time-bound delivery plan, and strong collaboration across multiple teams. Together, these elements gave us focus, structure and shared ownership — and allowed us to deliver a tool that now provides better information sharing and decision-making support.

Reflection 1: Clear Requirements = A Strong Foundation

We launched a trial version of the dashboard early in 2025. After four months, we gathered structured feedback from the main user groups: partner-facing staff, staff in sector oversight roles, and members of the Governance Team.

We worked through the feedback in detail and captured a clear list of change requests and improvement ideas. Each suggestion — whether a new feature, a data change or a design update — was assessed for feasibility and user impact, then prioritised using four categories:

This approach kept the project focused and prevented us from trying to do everything at once. It also allowed us to realistically estimate the time and effort required for the most important changes and plan delivery in manageable stages. Most importantly, it prevented new, unplanned requirements from distracting us from what really mattered.

Without clear requirements, projects can easily lose direction. Our prioritised list gave us a roadmap and ensured we delivered what users genuinely needed.

Reflection 2: A Time-Bound Plan = Focus and Momentum

From the outset, we agreed a clear end date to work towards: the dashboard would be live by the end of October 2025. This gave us a clear target and created a shared sense of urgency and focus. From there, we broke the work into two-week delivery blocks, each with a clear purpose:

This structured plan made it easier for everyone to balance their time and commit to the work. Our regular check-in meetings stayed short and purposeful because we always knew what stage we were at and what needed to be delivered next. Without a time-bound plan, projects can lose energy and drift on — a clear end date helps momentum and ensures progress continues at pace.

Reflection 3: Collaboration = Key to Success

This was not just a Digital & Service Design Team project. The Governance Team own the dashboard and its data. Our team handled development and testing. Other teams supported requirements gathering and user testing. We also drew on specialist expertise for user research and deployment.

Members of the project team brought complementary skills across delivery, design, governance and data. Close collaboration with the project sponsor and product owner was crucial in ensuring the dashboard stayed aligned with organisational needs and that issues could be resolved quickly and effectively.

Without this collective effort, the dashboard would not reflect the needs of its users. Successful projects depend on shared ownership, open communication and trust across teams — no single team can deliver complex digital products alone!