The Deadline That Couldn’t Move: 10 Years On From My First Tableau Launch

My youngest son turns 10 this month. He’s on the countdown, FC 27, Funko Pops and a spiderman webshooter are al;l on his long list, when he reminds me, without meaning to, that 10 years ago I was about to go on maternity leave with him.

That reminder landed harder than he knew. Because 10 years ago, weeks before he arrived, I led the launch of the first proper dashboards my NHS organisation had ever had. It’s still one of the proudest achievements of my career, and I want to tell you why.

The problem we were actually solving

This wasn’t really about software. It was about years of banging my head against a wall trying to get people to trust data.

Before Tableau, we were sending out SSRS reports every weeks, or Excel reports monthly, and they were out of date the moment they landed in someone’s inbox. Clinicians and managers couldn’t drill through to verify anything, so they didn’t trust the numbers, and the whole cycle would start again: challenge the data, validate the data, argue about whether performance was really that bad or the data was just poor quality. Round and round.

I wanted to put data in the hands of the people who actually owned it, so they could dive in and check it for themselves, in real time.

The pilot that changed the room

I ran a pilot the year before the full rollout, in front of leaders and operational managers who told me, more or less as soon as I walked through the door, that they weren’t interested in data or another NHS system.

Then I sat them in front of a dashboard showing information tied to their own work. The conversation changed instantly. Managers started dragging me into rooms. They were showing off their dashboards to each other, comparing data quality, encouraging their colleagues to get on board. I sat in that pilot and watched scepticism turn into ownership in real time.

That pilot is what unlocked funding for a full rollout, eventually reaching around 700 people across the organisation.

The part that was actually hard

Getting the pilot signed off was one thing. Getting funding for the full rollout was a fight.

The board had seen plenty of failed NHS IT projects and were wary of another one. I didn’t always handle that fight gracefully, if I’m honest. I took the first rejection to heart. We brought in consultants who verified the strategy, and eventually the funding came through, and I was made up. I was never going to let this implementation fail.

I was also managing a team of 20 through their usual BI and reporting workload, on top of building the skills for this new way of working: moving people from SQL and Excel into Tableau, and into proper data visualisation, which wasn’t something the NHS gave anyone time to learn when the job was mostly churning out statutory returns.

And I was heavily pregnant through the whole thing. Knackered. Absolutely determined to get it live before I went on leave, because that deadline wasn’t moving whatever happened. There’s a photo somewhere from the launch party a few weeks before I left, and you can see exactly how pregnant I was.

What happened while I was away

I went on maternity leave for eight months, genuinely worried about what would happen to something I’d put everything into. But I’d built the team up before I left, and I trusted them.

They didn’t just keep it going, they grew it. More dashboards, more engagement, more skill. Because the motivation in that team had shifted. They were tired of producing data nobody looked at. Now people wanted them in the room. That kind of shift, from being ignored to being sought out, changes how a team shows up to work.

Why I’m telling you this now

This isn’t a story about Tableau being the best software (though it was a great one to launch with). It’s a story about data visualisation, about driving insight into action, and about what happens when you help other people engage with data instead of just handing it to them.

It also shaped how I show up now. After that rollout, I started presenting the journey externally, something I’d never done before. NHS BI work was, and often still is, siloed. One of the people who changed that for me was Simon Beaumont, a BI leader at another trust about eight months ahead of us on their own Tableau rollout, who shared everything he knew without being asked twice. That kind of generosity taught me how much faster you move when people share openly, and it’s a big part of why I do what I do now.

The bit I actually want to ask you

Trying for that pregnancy hadn’t been straightforward, and then I was heavily pregnant, exhausted, and running the biggest change project of my career, all at once. I still did it. Not because it was easy, but because I knew why I was doing it.

So: where were you 10 years ago? What did you do that you’re genuinely proud of, and how has it shaped where you are now?

And to my team at the time, who got thoroughly sick of me banging on about Tableau and data visualisation until I finally gave you the tools, skills, and energy to run with it yourselves: this one’s for you. 🙏thank you!

If this story resonates and you are having trouble getting buy in for investment for new software or new ways working, I coach people and organisations through exactly this — book a free discovery call.

Best wishes

Ella