Targets, progress and status
Bullet chart
Compares an actual value with a target and optional qualitative performance ranges.
- Chart
- Performance against target
- Comparison
What it answers
How does performance compare with a target and ranges?
- Shape
- Bar, target marker and bands
- What it shows
- Target gap and position within performance ranges.
Example
The question
Is each sales team on track against its quarterly target?
Sales against target by team, Q3 2025 (EUR thousand)
Illustrative data. It belongs to no company.
When to use it
Use it when
Compact actual-versus-target reporting.
Avoid it when
When readers primarily need history or multiple incomparable targets.
How to read it
Compare the actual bar with the target marker and labelled bands.
The data you need
- Layout
- Wide summary table
- Fields
- Metric: text; Actual: number; Target: number
- One row is
- One metric with its actual and target values. What is the grain?
- Rules
- Match units and periods. Define whether higher or lower values are better.
- Optional
- Optional range boundaries such as PoorMax,FairMax,GoodMax.
- Preparation
- Confirm the metric definition, reporting period, target and favourable direction. Calculate rates or progress before applying transparent status rules.
- Units
- State each metric's unit. Achievement or completion needs its goal/baseline denominator; status colours and ordinal ratings are not numeric units.
Worked example
Data actual 80, target 100, bands 0-60,60-90,90-120. The bar stops 20 below target, within the middle band.
| Metric | Actual | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Sales | 80 | 100 |
| Renewals | 72 | 75 |