A data‑ops team recently ran usage analytics on its internal dashboards and found that more than 60 % had never been opened in 90 days. The audit revealed a similar pattern at the data‑table level, with 70 % of thousands of tables sitting idle. The result forced a rethink of how the organization builds and maintains analytics assets.

The team treated analytics like a factory floor, noting that they were producing dashboards and reports that no one used. They shifted focus from build time and feature count to actual usage, time to value, and decisions influenced. A simple 90‑day audit identified 60 % of dashboards with zero active users.

A decision tree prompted creators of unused dashboards to receive a sunset notice. Within a quarter, the inventory shrank from 47 to 12, leaving only actively maintained and valuable products. The exercise highlighted that keeping idle inventory costs money and mental bandwidth, and that sunsetting unused assets frees resources for higher‑impact work.