Burndown Chart
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iOS App Development
Burndown Chart
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
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Learning Outcomes By the end of the unit, the students should be able to: 1. Graph the team’s velocity on a Sprint Burndown Chart. 2. Graph the team’s velocity on a Project Burndown Chart. 3. Predict the team’s ideal Project velocity.
Vocabulary Sprint Burndown Chart Project Burndown Chart
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
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The Burndown Chart is a graphical representation of the effort needed to complete a project as well as the likelihood of achieving the sprint goal. It uses story points and velocity to measure how long a project may take given a team’s velocity. The Burndown Chart gives visibility into how much is being completed each day. There are two types of Burndown Charts: the Sprint Burndown Chart, which monitors how each sprint is going, and the Project Burndown Chart, which monitors how the entire project is going. A typical Burndown Chart has an x-axis of time and a y-axis of effort based on uncompleted story points. The following graph is a typical Sprint Burndown Chart:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 4
The x-axis displays the days in your sprint. According to this Burndown Chart, our sprint was 5 days. The y-axis is the sum of uncompleted story points for this single sprint. It’s important that each team should be creating a new sheet for every sprint and saving past sheets for reference. How The Sprint Burndown Chart Works Everyday the team’s Scrum Master should add all of the uncompleted user story points for that sprint. These are any of the stories that are not in the “done” section:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
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The Scrum Master should then take that number of uncompleted points and record them on the Sprint Burndown Chart. For example, if the team started with 33 total points for the sprint and then completed 3 stories that were each 2 points, they would have 27 uncompleted story points. The Scrum Master should draw a dot on the graph at “Day 1” for the x-axis and, in this example, 27 for the y-axis. They should then connect the dot from the previous total to the new total. Here’s what it should look like:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 6
This should happen every day. It’s important that the Scrum Master sticks to a consistent time each day so the data includes a full day. It can be up to the team when this is. After a full week is completed the Burndown Chart will hopefully look something like this:
What happens if the team doesn’t complete all of the stories they committed to during the sprint? You simply add them back on top of the product backlog to be discussed during the next sprint planning meeting. During the Sprint Retrospective, the team should discuss why they didn’t complete all of the user stories that they had committed to. There may be many reasons for this. For example, they may have underestimated how long a task may have taken or they may have had a blocker that wasn’t removed and prevented them from completing the user story. It’s up to the team to review this and take action to prevent it for the next sprint. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
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The Project Burndown Chart is very similar to the Sprint Burndown Chart, but it measures how the project as a whole is going. A typical Project Burndown Chart looks something like the following chart:
You probably notice that the y-axis has stayed the same, but the x-axis now displays sprints instead of days. This chart measures uncompleted story points per sprint. This chart also includes an “ideal path” (the blue line) and connects the total uncompleted story points in the backlog to the final sprint. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
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How the Project Burndown Chart works First the Scrum Master needs to create the Project Burndown Chart. This is done by calculating all of the story points for all of the user stories in the backlog. Even though this may change over time, it will still give a good measurement as to how long the project may take. The Scrum Master should then calculate how many sprints the project will take by dividing the total uncompleted story points by the team’s velocity. For example, lets assume the team has 170 uncompleted story points in the backlog. Lets also assume we know that the team’s average velocity is 34. This means that it should take the team 5 sprints to complete all of the stories in the backlog. Once we know that the backlog should be completed in roughly 5 sprints, the Scrum Master can create the Project Burndown Chart by making the y-axis include enough numbers to display all of the story points and the x-axis display enough sprints for the total number estimated sprints. In this example, we’ve made the y-axis 175 and the x-axis include 5 sprints. At the end of each sprint the Scrum Master should calculate all of the uncompleted story points that are still in the backlog and record them on the chart for the specific sprint. Remember that a story needs to be “done” to no longer be recorded in the chart. The Project Burndown Chart is flexible Remember that agile is about flexibility. The Project Burndown Chart will constantly change as the team’s velocity changes. The Scrum Master may need to create a new Project Burndown Chart after each sprint. That’s okay! The team won’t know what their average velocity is until after the first three sprints. If the Scrum Master does not know the team’s ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 9
average velocity yet, they can simply create a Project Burndown Chart that includes a handful of sprints in the x-axis. Lets run through some scenarios: Team “Rascal” has created their product backlog and they have 150 uncompleted story points. They do not know their average velocity yet because they have yet to complete a sprint. The team has just completed their first sprint planning meeting and committed to completing 5 stories that are each 3 points. The Rascal’s Scrum Master creates, prints out, and posts two charts: a Sprint Burndown Chart and a Project Burndown Chart. Since the team has committed to completing 15 points for their first sprint, the Scrum Master assumes that the Project Burndown Chart will include 10 total sprints (150 / 15). The charts would look something like this:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
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Sprint 1: The Rascals get a slow start on their first day and don’t get any stories completed. The second and third days prove to be much more successful, but on the fourth day they hit a bit of a road block and realized they may have over committed for this sprint. The fifth day proves not to be much different and so the team doesn’t complete the stories they committed to for this sprint. The Scrum Master has been updating the Sprint Burndown Chart daily and it ends up looking like this:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 11
Sprint 2: The previous stories that didn’t get completed were added back on to the backlog and the team decided that they should commit to less stories this sprint since they bit off a little more than they could chew last sprint. The Rascals end up committing to completing 4 stories that are a total of 10 story points during their sprint planning meeting. This sprint goes much better and the team ends up completing the stories as planned. The new Sprint Burndown Chart looks something like this:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
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After two sprints, the Scrum Master is starting to understand what the team’s velocity is. Based on Sprint 1 and Sprint 2 the average velocity was 10. That means that the team can assume they are able to get about 10 points completed each sprint. The Project Burndown Chart can now be updated to get a closer idea of how long the project may take. With a smaller average velocity, the project will be extended by 3 sprints. The Scrum Master creates a new Project Burndown Chart that looks something like this:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 13
Completing the project After a few more sprints, the team ends up doubling their velocity. This is typical after the team gets familiar with the process, working as a team, the project, and the technology. Throughout the rest of the project, the Scrum Master continued to create new Sprint Burndown Charts each sprint and updated them daily. The Scrum Master also continued to update the Project Burndown Chart each week, modifying it based on the previous week’s velocity. The project ended up being completed in 9 sprints. The final Project Burndown Chart looks something like this:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
iOS App Development
Burndown Chart
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
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Learning Outcomes By the end of the unit, the students should be able to: 1. Graph the team’s velocity on a Sprint Burndown Chart. 2. Graph the team’s velocity on a Project Burndown Chart. 3. Predict the team’s ideal Project velocity.
Vocabulary Sprint Burndown Chart Project Burndown Chart
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 3
The Burndown Chart is a graphical representation of the effort needed to complete a project as well as the likelihood of achieving the sprint goal. It uses story points and velocity to measure how long a project may take given a team’s velocity. The Burndown Chart gives visibility into how much is being completed each day. There are two types of Burndown Charts: the Sprint Burndown Chart, which monitors how each sprint is going, and the Project Burndown Chart, which monitors how the entire project is going. A typical Burndown Chart has an x-axis of time and a y-axis of effort based on uncompleted story points. The following graph is a typical Sprint Burndown Chart:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 4
The x-axis displays the days in your sprint. According to this Burndown Chart, our sprint was 5 days. The y-axis is the sum of uncompleted story points for this single sprint. It’s important that each team should be creating a new sheet for every sprint and saving past sheets for reference. How The Sprint Burndown Chart Works Everyday the team’s Scrum Master should add all of the uncompleted user story points for that sprint. These are any of the stories that are not in the “done” section:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 5
The Scrum Master should then take that number of uncompleted points and record them on the Sprint Burndown Chart. For example, if the team started with 33 total points for the sprint and then completed 3 stories that were each 2 points, they would have 27 uncompleted story points. The Scrum Master should draw a dot on the graph at “Day 1” for the x-axis and, in this example, 27 for the y-axis. They should then connect the dot from the previous total to the new total. Here’s what it should look like:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 6
This should happen every day. It’s important that the Scrum Master sticks to a consistent time each day so the data includes a full day. It can be up to the team when this is. After a full week is completed the Burndown Chart will hopefully look something like this:
What happens if the team doesn’t complete all of the stories they committed to during the sprint? You simply add them back on top of the product backlog to be discussed during the next sprint planning meeting. During the Sprint Retrospective, the team should discuss why they didn’t complete all of the user stories that they had committed to. There may be many reasons for this. For example, they may have underestimated how long a task may have taken or they may have had a blocker that wasn’t removed and prevented them from completing the user story. It’s up to the team to review this and take action to prevent it for the next sprint. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 7
The Project Burndown Chart is very similar to the Sprint Burndown Chart, but it measures how the project as a whole is going. A typical Project Burndown Chart looks something like the following chart:
You probably notice that the y-axis has stayed the same, but the x-axis now displays sprints instead of days. This chart measures uncompleted story points per sprint. This chart also includes an “ideal path” (the blue line) and connects the total uncompleted story points in the backlog to the final sprint. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 8
How the Project Burndown Chart works First the Scrum Master needs to create the Project Burndown Chart. This is done by calculating all of the story points for all of the user stories in the backlog. Even though this may change over time, it will still give a good measurement as to how long the project may take. The Scrum Master should then calculate how many sprints the project will take by dividing the total uncompleted story points by the team’s velocity. For example, lets assume the team has 170 uncompleted story points in the backlog. Lets also assume we know that the team’s average velocity is 34. This means that it should take the team 5 sprints to complete all of the stories in the backlog. Once we know that the backlog should be completed in roughly 5 sprints, the Scrum Master can create the Project Burndown Chart by making the y-axis include enough numbers to display all of the story points and the x-axis display enough sprints for the total number estimated sprints. In this example, we’ve made the y-axis 175 and the x-axis include 5 sprints. At the end of each sprint the Scrum Master should calculate all of the uncompleted story points that are still in the backlog and record them on the chart for the specific sprint. Remember that a story needs to be “done” to no longer be recorded in the chart. The Project Burndown Chart is flexible Remember that agile is about flexibility. The Project Burndown Chart will constantly change as the team’s velocity changes. The Scrum Master may need to create a new Project Burndown Chart after each sprint. That’s okay! The team won’t know what their average velocity is until after the first three sprints. If the Scrum Master does not know the team’s ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 9
average velocity yet, they can simply create a Project Burndown Chart that includes a handful of sprints in the x-axis. Lets run through some scenarios: Team “Rascal” has created their product backlog and they have 150 uncompleted story points. They do not know their average velocity yet because they have yet to complete a sprint. The team has just completed their first sprint planning meeting and committed to completing 5 stories that are each 3 points. The Rascal’s Scrum Master creates, prints out, and posts two charts: a Sprint Burndown Chart and a Project Burndown Chart. Since the team has committed to completing 15 points for their first sprint, the Scrum Master assumes that the Project Burndown Chart will include 10 total sprints (150 / 15). The charts would look something like this:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 10
Sprint 1: The Rascals get a slow start on their first day and don’t get any stories completed. The second and third days prove to be much more successful, but on the fourth day they hit a bit of a road block and realized they may have over committed for this sprint. The fifth day proves not to be much different and so the team doesn’t complete the stories they committed to for this sprint. The Scrum Master has been updating the Sprint Burndown Chart daily and it ends up looking like this:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 11
Sprint 2: The previous stories that didn’t get completed were added back on to the backlog and the team decided that they should commit to less stories this sprint since they bit off a little more than they could chew last sprint. The Rascals end up committing to completing 4 stories that are a total of 10 story points during their sprint planning meeting. This sprint goes much better and the team ends up completing the stories as planned. The new Sprint Burndown Chart looks something like this:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 12
After two sprints, the Scrum Master is starting to understand what the team’s velocity is. Based on Sprint 1 and Sprint 2 the average velocity was 10. That means that the team can assume they are able to get about 10 points completed each sprint. The Project Burndown Chart can now be updated to get a closer idea of how long the project may take. With a smaller average velocity, the project will be extended by 3 sprints. The Scrum Master creates a new Project Burndown Chart that looks something like this:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
PAGE 13
Completing the project After a few more sprints, the team ends up doubling their velocity. This is typical after the team gets familiar with the process, working as a team, the project, and the technology. Throughout the rest of the project, the Scrum Master continued to create new Sprint Burndown Charts each sprint and updated them daily. The Scrum Master also continued to update the Project Burndown Chart each week, modifying it based on the previous week’s velocity. The project ended up being completed in 9 sprints. The final Project Burndown Chart looks something like this:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MOBILE MAKERS ACADEMY 223 W Erie, Suite 4NW, Chicago, IL 60654 www.mobilemakers.co
© 2015 Mobile Makers Academy, LLC
