Calendars provide information in the context of a product or material. Dashboards provide information in the context of a season. Without calendars, dashboards contain no information to display.

You can create multiple calendars and compare them with each other. By using one master calendar to track a set of milestones, and then comparing the calendars of many sub-objects to the master, you can produce a report. This report compares the estimated or actual completion dates of the sub-objects with the target dates of the master calendar. This type of report is sometimes called a dashboard because it gives a high-level overview of many processes in one format.

For example, a seasonal calendar tracks high-level events and milestones related to season development, while product calendars track events and milestones related to individual product development. Because seasonal development depends on the development of its products, some events in the season calendar map to or depend on events in the products calendar. There might be a season calendar event called “Line Closed” which maps to a lifecycle state. When the business determines whether or not to complete this event in the seasonal calendar, they might want to verify that all products in the season have been “Approved for Production,” which is defined as an event in the product calendar. Because this mapping between events is known, a report can be created to compare the target date of the season’s “Line Closed” event against the estimated or actual completion date of the product’s “Approved For Production” event. If the date of a product is beyond the target date of the season, then a flag can indicate that the product is at risk of slowing down the season. By showing this data for all products on a season, a dashboard is created to assess the health of a season’s development.