Burndown charts are usually used by teams who work in sprints as they can show if you are likely to meet or miss pending deadlines.
Management guru Peter Drucker famously suggested the notion that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Therefore, the measurement of work items or any important variable is central to making progress, gaining clarity over what is left and what remains, allocating correct resources and so much more. A burndown chart aims to provide this clarity and transparency across the entire project team.
When working in sprints, 2–3-week bursts of collective effort, aimed at completing a pre-agreed list of work items, teams need some form of measurement which will track progress. By plotting what is left to do vs the time left you can do it in helps you realistically understand your work items with greater clarity, the effort (or lack of) being made, any blockers in the way and so much more.
Burndown Charts Measures Key Metrics
Burndown charts are an efficient way to calculate whether your team has enough time and resources to complete their work, these charts are typically found in iterative environments by development teams who work in sprints. Valuable insights such as pending deadlines can be ascertained as well as effort levels; burndown charts all indicate these insights in graphical form.
Burndown chart can help with the following:
- Workload management
- Prioritizing stakeholders time
- Adds more analytical rigor by being more meticulous in approach
Additionally, a team is usually more confident due to the practices adopted, morale is usually higher, leading to more productivity and a more successful project outcome. Using burndown charts is a simple, yet effective tool in your analytical arsenal that could make a big difference to how you and your team operate.
Burndown Chart vs Burnup Chart
A burnup chart is deployed when a team needs to understand how much work has been completed. Both charts keep you informed about the variables within a project, hence why they work in tandem as complementary metrics.
The main difference between a burnup and burndown chart is the latter depicts how much work is remaining. In contrast, the former shows how much work has been done so far.
Burndown Charts Work Like This
Burndown charts work by estimating the amount of work needed to be finished and plotting it against the time it takes to complete the work, i.e., effort vs time. The aim is to accurately depict time allocated to work items so the project team can be more efficient to plan for future resources such as developer time/expertise, SME/stakeholder time and so on.
Whilst working, some Project Sponsors, CEOs, Managing Directors, and other senior stakeholders may have to obtain funding, or buy-in into an idea or concept. The more accurate the team on the ground can be with how long a certain tranche of tasks take to complete, the more credibility and confidence the senior stakeholders will have. This information can then help manage expectations, resources, and the like. Without good measurements project updates could lack credibility, realism, and accuracy, leading to falls in morale, loss of confidence and a waste of time.
How to Read a Burndown Chart
There are various components to a burndown chart, understanding each is key. Burndown charts tend to include the following:
- X-axis (horizontal axis): Represents the amount of time left to complete the work items in the project. This is usually shown in days.
- Y-axis (vertical axis): The Y axis represents the remaining effort needed to complete the project. This is usually shown in story points.
- Actual work line: This metric represents the actual work remaining. Usually, this line is different from the initial estimate as issues arise (blockers, delays, unexpected/unforeseen circumstances and so on) and the time things takes grows. This line isn’t usually linear in trajectory.
- Estimated work line: Before you start working the team estimates each work item by allocating some form of metric (usually story points) to each work item in the (Sprint) Backlog. Collectively, these items form a linear trajectory as opposed to the actual work line.
- Story Points: Agile teams usually use story points to estimate work items. Story points appear on both axes because both Estimated and Actual work items are being depicted.
- Sprint Goal: An effective burndown chart should have a clear overall sprint goal. This will be conveyed in both the sprint backlog (i.e., work items selected to work on in that given sprint) and the story points allocated to each item. Seldom does the Actual work line and the Estimated work line meet perfectly, but having an aim keeps the team focused.
Limitations of Burndown Charts
Burndown charts are great for quickly assessing the ratio of work items remaining and the time it will take to complete those items, there are of course some limitations. Firstly, a burndown chart does not highlight project changes. This alone makes it difficult to tell if changes are due to backlog items being finished or because of a change in story points.
Other limitations include:
- Overreliance on Sprint Planning: in terms of accuracy and rigor, burndown charts rely heavily on pinpoint predictions for pending sprints. This is because burndown charts used will lose credibility if they are way off, providing no analytical insight into time left to complete work. Therefore, Sprint Planning, led by the Scrum Master, must be as accurate as possible, and this can be very difficult.
- Burndown charts could also become a distraction to teams who are more focused on improving the chart itself as opposed to obtaining a true, in-depth understanding of the work, scope, and project.
“The disadvantage of a burndown chart is that it often distracts teams from understanding what is going on under the surface as they focus on improving the chart itself. It leads to a wrongly prioritized backlog, unclear requirements, unrealistic expectations, and deadlines.” Thierry Tremblay, CEO & Founder of Kohezion
- Burndown charts mainly measure activity as opposed to accomplishment. Not to say that accomplishment or the explicit analysis of accomplishment cannot be derived from burndown charts, but the metric is primarily designed to measure activity.
- Some teams don’t like recording their hours, it can feel too close to micro-management, which could lead to additional and unnecessary pressure when the priority should be on completing work
Clearly, burndown charts are not ineffable and have limitations. Considerations on whether to adopt burndown charts is subject to the Scrum Master, Business Analyst or staff member who oversees requirements, ensuring that everybody is on the same page, this will usually be done in the Scrum ceremonies (Planning, Review and Retrospectives respectfully).
Burndown Chart Software
There are several tools out there, you could manually create these charts in Excel. However, we’ve compiled a list of some products:
Codegiant
Codegiant is a project management tool aimed primarily at developers due to extra features such as git repositories, built in CI/CD and enhanced documentation features. Codegiant also has features that offer both Kanban and Scrum boards.
Azure DevOps
Azure DevOps is Microsoft’s offering of developer services. As you’d expect, DevOps allows teams to plan work, collaborate on code development, build, and deploy applications. Specifically regarding burndown charts, Azure has a feature called Azure Boards. Azure Boards contains all the Agile tools you’d typically expect, including Kanban boards, bug tracking, user stories, features, epics and much more.
ClickUp
ClickUp is a relatively new project management tool. The application has a plethora of features. Also, in Q4 2020 they raised $35 million in Series A, so there’s plenty of refinement and product enhancements in the pipeline.
One unconventional aspect of ClickUp’s burndown charts is the addition of a third line, a project progress line. This metric measures the pace and consistency of progress if you were to maintain the same rhythm across the remaining time of your sprint.
Jira
Last but certainly not least is perhaps the most well-known project management tool, Jira. Jira is trusted by more than 65,000 teams across the world. Other than burndown charts, Jira can also do the following:
- Risk and release burndown charts
- Dashboards
- Kanban and Scrum boards
- Mobile app version available
How To Create a Burndown Chart
You now know what a burndown chart is, you know what tools can create and manage your work items, we should now look at how to create a burndown chart.
Step 1 – Estimate Effort
In a Scrum environment the Product Owner will lead a Scrum ceremony known as a Sprint Planning session. In this session the project team will congregate and allocate effort points to work items for the pending sprint. Also, this session is where the team will discuss and finalize their ideal baseline of work in the time allocated.
For example, your ideal baseline could be to complete your sprint in 10 days with 160 hours of work, meaning 16 hours per day. You then begin your effort trajectory at 160 (representing 160 hours) and track your effort for the remaining days. It would look something like this:
Once you have your estimated effort, you can begin to track against your predictions; your daily progress becomes your burndown line.
Step 2 – Track Daily Progress
Once you have derived your estimates, you can begin tracking your daily progress. This is a simple process that can be done on a chart or a specific timeline tool. You should track how much time it takes to complete each task and how that effort is affecting your goal.
As you can see, the total matches the 160 we have derived from the Planning session. This table is a granular breakdown of how much effort it might take to get these tasks done on their respective days.
Step 3 – Calculate the Actual Effort
Now we’ve calculated the estimates we should do the same for the actual time taken. Using a similar table/tool to the estimates:
Your lines might be the same, but in truth they are most likely to be different due to unforeseen complexities that will inevitably arise whilst work is being completed. It is normal to see ebbs and flows of effort so don’t be deterred if this is the case.
If your lines are drastically different it may be due to ineffective planning. This should be addressed in the Retrospective so that a more accurate depiction can be derived.
Step 4 – Derive Final Dataset
In this step you need to measure your forecasts against your actuals:
Forecast vs Actual
Step 5 – Plot Burndown Chart
The final step is to plot the chart. You could do this manually with a tool like Excel, but this approach could be time consuming and therefore inefficient. Moreover, all the mentioned tools above all plot Forecasts and Actuals in an automated way, so make use of a good project management tool so you can focus on working on the solution with your team.
Here is what our burndown chart looks like:
As you can see, the forecast and the actual lines are different. Sometimes they cross but they often miss each other. This is normal. What this chart tells us is our predictions were fairly accurate, so the resources were well allocated.
Clearly, in our second instance our actuals are drastically different in certain instances. If this is a consistent trend in recurring sprints, then the planning sessions need to be accurate, and more requirements analysis needs to be done so that a more accurate estimation can be derived.
Main Benefits of Using a Burndown Chart
Visually, a burndown chart provides a great way for work that needs to be done vs the time taken. This can provide sharp analysis from the whole team as they can see straight away if they are on target or not.
Additional benefits of using burndown charts include:
1. Provides focal point for team – no matter your position, everybody can interpret a graph and you have a good idea of where the whole project is immediately due to the visuals presented.
2. Productivity insight provided – a team can see and monitor and measure their output by utilizing a burndown chart. If your actual work is drastically different from your ideal/forecast, then a burndown chart could begin the pinpoint exercise of understanding why.
Conclusion
Burndown charts are one of the best ways to track your team progress and make the necessary adjustments when needed. Teams tend to use burnup charts in tandem, especially if large, complex projects are being worked and scope creep becomes an issue.
Burndown charts can provide clarity regarding deadlines, so senior stakeholders tend to appreciate the information derived due to the enhanced transparency and clarity provided. In short, burndown charts are an excellent tool when used properly. Track your work with analytical rigor and start using burndown charts today.
