About Burndown Chart

The Burndown chart graphically shows how the remaining work (Y-axis) relates to time (x-axis). The chart is a downward curve, with the remaining work completed, "Burnt" to 0. The key of Burndown chart is to analyze it iteratively and improve it continuously according to the analysis results.

First, functional aspects:

The analysis of Burndown chart can reveal many problems, such as how the team behaves, how to improve it, etc., it helps to grasp the progress of the team.

For example:

What about the team's plan development?

How does the team perform on the planned story in a sprint?

Is the team self-managing? As a "team", is everyone's work unison?

What improvements can the team make?

Second, the elements:

The Burndown chart has a y-axis and an x-axis and basic two lines. The y-axis represents the work to be done, the x-axis represents the time, one line represents the speed, and the other line represents the actual work done. Typically, multiple burndown charts are put together for iterative comparisons.

Third, examples

Apply to agile development, monitor and trend analysis of iterative progress in agile development projects, and each Burndown chart is automatically drawn from Excel based on the daily update data of the sprint backlog. The horizontal axis represents the duration, the ordinate represents the work task commitment work in the sprint, the plan curve represents the progress curve that assumes the member work productivity is constant, the actual curve represents the actual progress curve.

For the Blue line in the chart, the team's plan is not good, because the line does not touch 0 points at all, there may be many reasons for this. There are also problems with the consistency of the team and they need coaching. As a result, planning and self-management needs to be improved for the team.

The Purple Line in the diagram shows that the team has reached a goal, but has not taken the initiative to update the numbers for two reasons: either they are too lazy to update the remaining work, or they have abandoned many user stories at the end of the sprint.

The Green Line in the diagram shows that the team is self-managing and has enough stories to achieve throughout the sprint for a well-planned, mature team's workload. This line is close to the ideal situation, indicating the complexity of software development.

About Burndown Chart