Burndown Charts

Understanding Burndown charts

The burndown chart represents the progress visually. It provides a day-by-day measure of the work that has been completed in a given sprint (iteration), or a release (program increment). It can also show how much work is completed in a particular epic or milestone. The total work left, according to your team's estimates, is shown as well.

The size of work is measured in story points or ideal hours typically.

Here are some of the ways that you could use a burndown chart:

• See how quickly your team is working
• See how work added/removed during the sprint has affected your team's overall progress

Typically a Burndown chart in Targetprocess is represented by line chart. Effort To Do (size of remaining work) is the vertical axis of the chart, and the Timeline (with daily or weekly resolution) is the horizontal axis.

Ideal line is an optional guideline. It shows an approximation of where your team should be (assuming linear progress towards fixed scope of work). In the meantime, Forecast line shows you where your team will probably be (assuming existing velocity towards the same scope of work).

Click on a point of the chart to check for additional details. List of added and removed work items with changes of estimated effort is shown for each day/week of the timeline.

Changes are divided into Added, Removed, Changed parts:

Team Burndown chart

This chart usually shows the progress of a single Agile team. Its timeline shows a single sprint (team iteration) with day-by-day precision. The chart measures effort of completed and remaining User Stories and Bugs.

Program Burndown chart

This chart usually shows the progress of a single Agile Release Train (ART), or multiple teams (so called "team-of-teams) together. Its timeline shows a single program increment (release) with week-by-week precision. The chart measures effort of completed and remaining Features.

Epic/Milestone Burndown chart

This chart usually shows you how your team is progressing against the work for an epic or a milestone. The chart measures effort of completed and remaining Features, or User Stories and Bugs.

Create a Burndown chart

There are multiple ways to add a Burndown chart to your system:

• Create from templates
• Create from scratch
• Add from Solution Library

Access charts

Find and open a standalone burndown chart from the sidebar menu.

It is also possible to embed charts as widgets to a dashboard. Dashboards allow to track progress of multiple teams on the single overview screen.