Team Burndown Chart
A burndown chart shows the amount of work that has been completed in an epic or sprint, and the total work remaining. Burndown charts are used to predict your team's likelihood of completing their work in the time available. They're also great for keeping the team aware of any scope creep that occurs.
Burndown charts are useful because they provide insight into how the team works. For example:
- If you notice that the team consistently finishes work early, this might be a sign that they aren't committing to enough work during sprint planning.
- If they consistently miss their forecast, this might be a sign that they've committed to too much work.
- If the burndown chart shows a sharp drop during the sprint, this might be a sign that work has not been estimated accurately, or broken down properly.
This report shows the amount of work to be done in a sprint. It can be used to track the total work remaining in the sprint, and to project the likelihood of achieving the sprint goal. By tracking the remaining work throughout the sprint, a team can manage its progress, and respond to trends accordingly. For example, if the burndown chart shows that the team may not reach the sprint goal, then they can take the necessary actions to stay on track.
How do we measure the Sprint burndown?
Each team can measure progress from three methods: Story Points, Time Estimate, Number of Work Items. The burndown chart will track based on how you have configured your team to track Work Items. This can be configured by editing the team.
What doe all these lines mean?
The Red Line
The red line is the "ideal path". This is the path based on your sprint estimate and burning down at an average for the length of the sprint. Ideally, you want your work items and estimate burn down to follow this path as closely as possible.
The Blue Line
The blue line represents the work items, and the number of hours estimated for each work item. If the line burns up during your sprint, that means you are adding work items to the sprint (or adjusting the sizing of them) after your sprint has started. This is considered an "Agile no-no". Ideally, you should be starting your sprint with estimated already in place and the work you have committed to doing.
The Green Line
The green line represents “hours logged”. The starting number at the beginning of the sprint is the number of hours logged for the work items you have added to your sprint. This line will continue to burn up for as long as you are logging time for the work items which are added to your sprint. This line will ONLY show up if you are tracking you team by "hours".
In the event that you have logged time for the work items in your sprint before your sprint, the total logged time will be represented at the start of your sprint. If you log time after your sprint, the total logged time will be indicated on the last day of your sprint.
The Orange Line
The orange line represents “hours remaining”. When you start the sprint, this number starts at the highest number when you started your sprint. This line will continue to burn down to zero when you have logged as much time as your work item estimates. This line will ONLY show up if you are tracking you team by "hours".