Dashboards are really useful when you’re trying to distribute a set of metrics that large numbers of people actually need to know and agree on in order to do their jobs. Most metrics aren’t like this, so there are a lot of bad dashboards, but they definitely have their place.

Edit: A good example of this is something like incoming shipments for a warehouse. Management all the way down to warehouse workers need to know what is slated for delivery, what’s already been delivered in the last few days, and what’s late.