What is a burn down chart?
A burn
down chart is an important tool in scrum. It provides a visual representation
about the progress achieved in a sprint while it is underway. They are very common
and extensively used by scrum masters
while scrum is being implemented in a project. The quantity, or the amount of
work remaining, in the form of pending tasks, is typically exhibited in a burn
down chart. The chart is simple and easy to understand, even by people who are
not familiar with scrum methodology.
Burn down charts are very useful for estimation purposes, and are essential for
determining the sprint velocity – the rate at which work in the form of user
stories is being completed by the development team – and planning the sprint
release.
Plotting the burn down chart
A
burn down chart can be plotted by including the work remaining in the form of
story points along the vertical Y-axis and the working days along the
horizontal X-axis. The pending work is typically represented in story points –
a unit of measurement to calculate the importance and priority of user stories
in the sprint backlog – instead of
user stories. The reason is user stories are broken down into tasks during the
second half of the sprint planning
meeting by the development team. It becomes difficult to read and
understand the chart if tasks are represented along the Y-axis. User stories
are descriptive in nature, and do not have a number or a value associated with
them, so it becomes difficult to estimate them. Therefore, the story points, which
are numeric values associated with each user
story, are used for plotting purposes. Know more on
