User Story: Asset Portfolio Management Dashboard

1. Problem Statement

The Asset Manager is tasked with long-term strategic planning for the utility's entire asset base but lacks a unified, real-time tool to do so effectively. This forces a reliance on manually compiled, often outdated, data from disparate systems.

Key Pain Points:

• Lack of a Strategic Overview: Inability to get a quick, consolidated view of portfolio health, risk, and financial standing.
• Inefficient Prioritization: Difficulty identifying which asset categories or age groups pose the most significant risk, leading to subjective investment decisions.
• Weak Justification for Investment: Struggling to build a data-driven business case for multi-million dollar capital requests without a clear link between asset condition and financial risk.
• Unclear Financial Outlook: Inability to quantify and track the "Investment Gap," which is the unfunded liability for replacing failing assets.

Core Problem: The absence of a single, strategic dashboard leads to reactive planning, inefficient capital allocation, and an inability to clearly communicate the financial and operational risks of aging infrastructure to executive stakeholders.

2. Who is the User Facing the Problem?

Primary User: Asset Manager

This individual is responsible for developing the utility's long-term asset management strategy. Their core duties include prioritizing capital investments, managing lifecycle costs, mitigating portfolio-wide risk, and reporting on asset performance to executive leadership. This dashboard is designed as their primary tool for strategic oversight.

3. Jobs To Be Done

For the Asset Manager:

When I need to develop the 5-year capital improvement plan,
But I can't easily visualize which assets are in the worst condition, pose the highest risk, and are driving our investment gap,
Help me by consolidating portfolio health, risk, and financial metrics into a single, interactive dashboard,
So that I can make defensible, data-driven decisions on where to allocate budget for maximum risk reduction and long-term value.

4. Solution

The solution is a strategic Asset Portfolio Dashboard that serves as a command center for the Asset Manager. It translates complex operational data into high-level, actionable insights for capital planning and risk management.

Key Capabilities:

1. Strategic KPI Overview: Presents the most critical metrics at a glance: Asset Health Index, Average Remaining Useful Life (RUL), Overall Risk Score, and the Investment Gap.
2. Portfolio Segmentation: Breaks down the portfolio by key strategic segments like Asset Category (e.g., Vertical, Horizontal) and Age Profile to quickly identify trends.
3. Condition & Risk Visualization: Uses clear, color-coded charts to display the distribution of assets by Health Status (Good, Fair, Poor) and Risk Level (Low, Medium, High).
4. Financial Impact Analysis: Features the "Investment Gap" as a core financial metric and tracks the "Emergency vs. Planned" work ratio to measure strategic effectiveness.
5. Interactive Drill-Down: Allows the user to click on any data segment (e.g., "High Risk Assets") to filter the entire dashboard and investigate the root causes behind the numbers.
6. Automated Watchlists: Surfaces contextual information like "Frequent Failure Assets" and "Overdue Inspections" to inform risk analysis.
7. Export & Reporting: Enables one-click export of any dashboard view to PDF or CSV for use in reports and presentations.

5. Major Steps Involved (Asset Manager Workflow)

1. Assess Portfolio: The Asset Manager opens the dashboard to begin their quarterly planning. They immediately review the four key KPIs at the top, noting an increase in the Overall Risk Score and the Investment Gap.
2. Isolate Problem Area: They identify that 90 assets are categorized as "High Risk" and click on that segment to investigate further.
3. Drill-Down Analysis: The entire dashboard filters to this high-risk segment. The manager can now clearly see that these assets are predominantly in the "> 20 years" age band and have a "Poor" health status.
4. Formulate Strategy: The data provides a clear conclusion: a specific cohort of aging assets is driving portfolio risk. These 90 assets become the top priority for the upcoming capital plan.
5. Justify the Plan: The Asset Manager exports the filtered dashboard view as a PDF. They use this visual evidence in their budget proposal to provide a data-driven justification for funding the replacement of these specific assets.

6. Flow Diagram

Asset Manager - Capital Planning Flow

mermaid

Source

graph TD

A[Login & Open Dashboard] --> B{Review Strategic KPIs};

B -- Risk Increasing? --> C[Click 'High Risk Assets' Segment];

C --> D{Analyze Filtered Dashboard};

D --> E[Correlate Risk with Asset Age & Condition];

E --> F[Identify Specific Assets for Capital Plan];

F --> G[Export View for Report];

G --> H[Submit Data-Driven Budget Proposal];

7. Business Rules

General Rules:

• The dashboard will default to a "Year-to-Date" view with options to filter by quarter or a custom date range.
• All trend indicators (e.g., ↑ 0.3) compare the selected period to the prior period.
• All chart segments and KPI widgets are interactive and will filter the entire dashboard upon being clicked.

Formulas for Key Metrics:

Metric	Formula	Business Meaning for Asset Manager
Asset Health Index	Weighted average of condition, age, and performance scores for all assets.	A single score to gauge if the overall condition of assets is improving or declining.
Avg. RUL	SUM(Expected Lifespan - Current Age) / COUNT(Total Assets)	Helps understand the long-term replacement curve. A decreasing RUL signals a future wave of replacement costs.
Overall Risk Score	Average of (Probability of Failure * Consequence of Failure) for all assets.	The primary indicator of portfolio vulnerability, used to track the effectiveness of risk mitigation strategies.
Investment Gap	SUM(Replacement Cost of 'Poor' Assets) - SUM(Budgeted Replacement Capital)	A critical financial metric that quantifies the funding shortfall for necessary asset replacements.

8. Sample Data

Asset Name	Asset Category	Age (Yrs)	Condition	Risk Score	Replacement Cost
Pump Station #7	Vertical Asset	22	Poor	8.5	$250,000
Main Feeder Line B	Horizontal Asset	35	Poor	9.2	$1,200,000
Water Treatment Plant #1	Facility	25	Poor	8.1	$5,000,000
Generator Unit A	Horizontal Asset	18	Fair	6.5	$150,000

9. Acceptance Criteria

1. The system must display the four primary KPIs: Asset Health Index, Avg RUL, Overall Risk Score, and Investment Gap.
2. The system must calculate the Investment Gap using the defined formula.
3. The system must correctly categorize assets into the defined "Asset Categories" and "Asset Age Profile" bands.
4. The system must display the total count and percentage of assets in "Poor Condition."
5. The system must display the total count and percentage of assets at "High Risk."
6. Clicking the "High Risk Assets" widget must filter all other widgets on the dashboard.
7. Clicking the "Poor Condition" widget must filter all other widgets on the dashboard.
8. The "Emergency vs Planned" work ratio must be displayed.
9. Trend arrows next to each KPI must accurately compare the current period to the previous period.
10. All KPIs must have a tooltip explaining the business meaning and calculation formula.
11. The "Frequent Failure Assets" widget must list assets with the most failures in the last 6 months.
12. The dashboard must provide an "Export to PDF" option.
13. The dashboard must load completely within 5 seconds for a portfolio of up to 10,000 assets.
14. The data on the dashboard must be refreshed at least once every 24 hours.
15. All interactive elements must provide a visual cue on hover.

10. Process Changes

From (Current Process)	To (New Process)	Impact Analysis
Spending days in spreadsheets to model risk and justify budgets.	Using the dashboard to instantly identify high-risk segments and quantify the investment gap.	Reduces annual capital planning preparation time by an estimated 30-40%, freeing up the manager for more strategic tasks.
Budget meetings rely on anecdotal evidence and high-level summaries.	Budget meetings are driven by clear, visual data from the dashboard showing the link between risk, age, and funding.	Increases credibility and leads to more effective, data-driven capital allocation.
Risk is assessed periodically as a major, time-consuming project.	Risk is monitored continuously via the "Overall Risk Score" KPI.	Enables agile strategy adjustments by showing the impact of investment decisions on risk in near real-time.

11. Impact from Solving This Problem

Metric	How it Improves
✅ Capital Budget Optimization	Ensures capital is allocated to assets that pose the greatest risk, maximizing the ROI of every dollar spent.
✅ Proactive Risk Reduction	Focusing investment on "High Risk" assets demonstrably lowers the utility's operational and financial risk profile.
✅ Strategic Alignment	Provides a clear, data-driven link between operations (asset condition) and financial strategy (capital planning).
✅ Stakeholder Confidence	Builds confidence with the board and regulators by demonstrating a mature, data-driven approach to asset management.

12. User Behavior Tracking

Question to Answer	Event to Track	Properties
How often is the Asset Manager monitoring the portfolio?	Dashboard_Viewed	user_role, timestamp, date_filter_range
What strategic segments are being investigated most?	Strategic_Filter_Applied	widget_name (e.g., 'Risk Assessment'), filter_value (e.g., 'High Risk')
Are the KPI definitions clear and being used?	KPI_Tooltip_Viewed	kpi_name (e.g., 'Investment Gap')
Is the dashboard being used to create reports?	Dashboard_Exported	format ('PDF', 'CSV'), active_filters
What is the typical analysis path for the manager?	Drilldown_Path_Tracked	path ('Clicked High Risk -> Filtered Age Profile')