The reference

What the number is compared with.

The part

What it is

Target, prior period, same period last year, or normal range. One is required and two is usually the most that helps.

Comparisons should be consistent across a dashboard, since a reader learns to read one convention and then misreads the others.

The smallest level

The attributes it carries

Each attribute is one of the framework’s shared types. What a date is, and how it is written, is defined once for the whole model — the note here says what it means in this particular place.

Compared with
Target, prior period, year ago or normal range.
Choice shared type
Reference value
What the comparison figure is.
Measure shared type
Consistent
Whether the same convention is used across the dashboard.
Choice shared type