references/monitoring-vs-analysis.md

# Monitoring vs Analysis

## What Problem This Solves

This reference separates operational dashboards from analytical workbenches and reports.

## When to Use It

Use this when deciding whether a screen should optimize for situation awareness, explanation, or exploration.

## Key Takeaways

- Monitoring dashboards should support rapid orientation and anomaly detection.
- Analytical views can tolerate more interaction and deeper drill-down.
- Reports are often better for explanation than dashboards.

## Common Mistakes

- Treating every operations problem like a BI dashboard.
- Packing a monitoring screen with equal-weight tiles and charts.

## Adjacent Skills

- `../SKILL.md`
- `../../reports-pdfs-and-slide-automation/SKILL.md`

## Source Links

- [Perceptual Edge](https://www.perceptualedge.com/)