“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein

In a follow-up to my previous article, Streamlining Stakeholder Requirements: A Smarter, Automated Approach, this article will explore how to gather, assess and act on feedback after a report or dashboard has gone live.

While upfront requirements gathering is crucial, the real test of success often begins once stakeholders start using the solution. This piece outlines a simple, repeatable framework for capturing post-deployment feedback to ensure your Power BI or Tableau solutions remain relevant, trusted, and impactful.

Why Feedback Doesn’t End at Go-Live

It’s a common misconception in data projects that delivery marks the finish line. The report or dashboard is live, the training has happened and the team moves on. But in reality, this moment is less a conclusion and more of an inflection point.

Even with the most diligent requirements gathering, using structured triage forms, discovery calls, and stakeholder walkthroughs, some truths only surface once users begin working with the solution in real-time.

Perhaps a visualisation does not quite reflect how decisions are made in practice. Maybe a filter behaves unintuitively. Or perhaps the report simply is not being used at all.

These scenarios can quietly erode the perceived value of the solution. Stakeholders, unsure of how to give feedback or feeling that it is too late to request changes, may revert to old habits or alternative tools.

When these issues are not addressed, they build up as technical debt. This essentially represents a missed opportunity to fully embed your solution and is the bugbear of many an analyst everywhere.

It is the kind of debt that does not appear on any budget but will be paid eventually, whether through duplicated work, poor decision-making, or a complete rebuild down the line.

By viewing deployment as another touchpoint in an iterative process, not the end, you set yourself up to tackle this debt early and proactively.

Introducing a Post-Implementation Feedback Survey

To avoid accumulating technical debt and ensure your reports deliver long-term value, it’s essential to create a structured yet simple way for stakeholders to share feedback once they’ve had time to use the solution.

This isn’t just about gathering praise, it’s about uncovering what’s missing, what could be clearer, and what might need to evolve as business needs change.

That said, when feedback is positive, it often goes unspoken.

A short survey can surface that appreciation, which is not only affirming for the team but also a real boost to morale and self-confidence. Stakeholders who may never share their thoughts in a meeting are far more likely to complete a form, especially when it’s quick and well-structured.

A post-implementation survey, sent a few weeks after deployment, signals that feedback is expected and welcomed. It also shows stakeholders that reporting is a living process, one they’re encouraged to shape.

Designing the Feedback Survey

To make feedback easy and consistent, I created a Microsoft Form titled [INSERT TEAM NAME] Post-Implementation Feedback Survey. It includes a mix of rating scales and open-ended questions that invite honest, actionable responses, without overwhelming the respondent.

Here’s a breakdown of the questions I included and why each one matters:

1. Which report are you completing this survey for?
   This anchors the feedback to a specific deliverable, making it easier to track themes and patterns across projects.

2. Overall Satisfaction (1–5 scale)
   A simple rating question to measure general sentiment. While not diagnostic on its own, it’s helpful when paired with more specific follow-ups.

3. Ease of Use (1–5 scale)
   Reports can be accurate but still hard to navigate. This question reveals any usability friction that might not be obvious to the report creator.

4. Most Positive Aspect
   Encouraging stakeholders to reflect on what works well helps surface strengths you can replicate elsewhere. It also gives analysts recognition for thoughtful design choices.

5. Areas for Improvement
   This is the most valuable question in the set. Specific, constructive feedback here helps guide refinements and ensures the report evolves with business needs.

6. Team Acknowledgement
   An opportunity for stakeholders to commend individual analysts or the team more broadly, something rarely shared verbally but a great morale booster when it is.

7. Recommendation
   A yes/no signal of advocacy. If stakeholders would recommend the report to a colleague, it’s a strong indicator of both value and trust.

This entire process takes less than two minutes for the user, but the insights you gain can shape the next iteration of your report or the next project entirely.

Capturing and Acting on Feedback Efficiently

Collecting feedback is only half the story, it’s what you do with it that drives real impact.

If responses sit buried in someone’s inbox or lost in a standalone spreadsheet, they’re unlikely to spark meaningful change. That’s why this process was designed with accessibility and visibility in mind.

Centralising responses

Each time a stakeholder submits the form, their answers are automatically recorded in a linked Excel workbook (explained in more detail, in my previous article). This file lives in the Files section of my Microsoft Teams workspace, which means no one needs to chase email attachments or dig through shared drives to find it.

Adding visibility in Teams

To increase accessibility, the Excel file is pinned as a dedicated tab at the top of the Team’s channel. Just click the + icon next to Posts, Files or Wiki, choose Excel, and navigate to the file. This ensures the feedback is always one click away, ready to inform decision-making at any time.

Normalising continuous improvement

As part of our rhythm, we dedicate 10–15 minutes during team check-ins to review new submissions. This small investment creates a huge return: issues are spotted early, improvements are implemented faster and the team stays connected to how reports are actually being used.

Spotting themes across projects

For larger teams, or those managing multiple reports, a simple tagging system within the Excel file can help identify trends. Columns like “Feedback Type” or “Recurring Theme” (e.g., Navigation, Data Accuracy, Visual Clarity) make it easier to track patterns across initiatives and inform training or design standards going forward.

By keeping feedback front and centre, you’re not only improving individual reports, you’re reinforcing a culture of iteration and shared ownership.

Real-World Wins: How Feedback Drove Meaningful Improvements

To show how this approach can lead to meaningful change, here’s one example from a recent report where stakeholder feedback directly shaped a better outcome.

In one of my reports, I initially used a standard design pattern where users would open the slicer panel via a hamburger icon (☰) and close it by clicking on the panel itself, which included a vertical line of text indicating how to do so.

While the functionality technically worked, post-deployment feedback revealed that both actions were causing confusion. Several users did not recognise the hamburger icon as a button and others did not realise the panel itself was clickable.

This challenged my assumptions about what I thought were universal user experience (UX) patterns, a perfect example of Jakob’s Law in action. The law states that users expect your design to work the same way as other tools they already use.

In this case, my assumption that the hamburger icon would be familiar and self-explanatory didn’t hold true. If users aren’t regularly exposed to this pattern in other reporting tools, it becomes a point of friction, not familiarity.

To address it, I replaced the original interaction with a clearly labeled toggle button that allowed users to open and close the slicer panel with a single, intuitive control. I also added a brief report tour using annotated screenshots to guide users through the layout and highlight key interactions (see LinkedIn post for more details).

You might be thinking, “surely this was covered in training?” A fair question.

The reality is, it’s rare to have all report consumers attend the same session and your audience naturally grows over time. The report tour acts as a future-proof layer: a lightweight, self-service walkthrough that ensures new users can get up to speed quickly, without relying on handovers or follow-ups.

These were simple adjustments, but they made a noticeable impact. Follow-up surveys reflected higher satisfaction and navigation-related questions dropped off significantly. It was a small design rethink, powered by timely feedback, that made the overall experience feel much more intuitive.

Final Thoughts

Deployment is not the final step in a project, it is simply another touchpoint in a continuous cycle of improvement.

A well-timed feedback loop ensures your solution remains relevant, trusted, and effective, while also giving stakeholders a voice and teams an opportunity to improve. It is a small step that can make a big difference.

By building feedback into the fabric (no pun intended) of your workflow, you are not just delivering reports/dashboards. You are building trust, momentum, and solutions that last.

Try this out and let me know on LinkedIn if it has proven useful for you and your team. I would love to hear how others are closing the loop.