Tracking Targets one Bullet at a Time
By: Slawomir Chodnicki
Tags: Analytics, Data Visualization, Reporting, Tutorial, Excel

Does that give you a good idea?

There’s hardly any need to explain the elements of this graph. It’s clear intuitively. There’s a target per measure, and the achievement bar is embedded in qualitative bands that tell us how performance is evaluated.

This kind of visual representation is called a “bullet chart” because of its distinctive appearance. It has been popularized by Stephen Few in his books on visual communication of data.

Creating a Bullet Chart in Excel

The bullet chart may be an effective means of showing actual vs. target data, but it’s not universally supported as an out-of-the-box chart type.

Let’s create a bullet chart in vanilla Excel.

I’ll be using Excel 2016 on Mac for the screenshots. Here’s hoping your — possibly future — version of Excel is similar enough to comfortably follow the construction of the chart.

In Excel terms, the basic idea is to create a stacked column for the qualitative bands, and a marker line and slim column for the current value on a secondary axis.

Construction plan for our bullet in terms of an Excel chart

We’re going to start with a single measure, and once that looks OK, we’ll add more “bullets”.

Let’s go.

Start with the data

Let’s look at the qualitative bands first. We’ll stack the bands, so each band is defined in terms of its size, not range.

For our first chart, let’s create bands ranging from Poor to Excellent. Stacking their values gives us a total of 125%.

We’ll also need a current value and a target. I’ve picked 88% for the current value and 100% for target.

The data for our first bullet chart

Create a stacked column chart

We want a stacked column chart to form our qualitative bands. We’ll break out the current value and target from the stack with some custom formatting.

Create a stacked column chart and switch rows/columns so we have a single column chart.

First Step — Create a Stacked Column Chart

Creating the target marker

Next, we’re breaking out the target value.

Turn the target value to a marker line on the secondary axis

Delete the secondary axis in the chart, so all values use the same scale

Format the marker’s appearance to your liking

Breaking out the target as a marked line on the secondary axis

Formatting the current value

We’re ready to break out the current value from the stack.

Move current value to the secondary axis.

Increase its gap width to make it appear slimmer. You may have to modify the width of the chart area to get the proportions right.

Use an appropriate color for the bar.

Breaking out current value as a column in secondary axis

Coloring and touch-ups

We’re already have a passable bullet chart. Adjust the colors for the bands and marker to your taste. Maybe adjust the scale to fit our range of 125% of max achievement.

Once you’re done, your chart should look something like this:

A bullet chart for a single measure

Extending to multiple measures

We now want to extend our chart to contain multiple bullets. One bullet per measure.

First provide the data for additional measures as columns in your data table. Once that is in place, you can simply drag the data area of the chart to cover your the measures.

Final touches

Adding a legend and some final touch-ups on positioning, proportions and colors should give you an agreeable final result.