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Burn-up or Burn-down Chart: Which Scrum method should you use?
Burn-up or Burn-down Chart: Which Scrum method should you use?

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This blog is the fifth in the series of blogs on Agile.

Various methods are used to track progress of projects. Two such ways of tracking progress in the scrum projects are the Burn-down and the Burn-up charts. Both these charts are widely used by Scrum Teams to not just track progress but to also communicate any issues.

Burn-up Charts

Burn-up charts are typically used by teams to track their progress as they work towards completing a sprint/ iteration. This chart represents time on the horizontal axis (in days usually) and represents amount of work (in hours or story points) on the vertical axis.

 

This chart is updated at the end of each unit of time. At any given point of time, the chart depicts the team’s actual progress. The team effort line moves or climbs from the bottom up towards the total effort line. When the two lines meet, the team’s goal is met.

A team can see how much work remains on their project, by watching the distance between the team effort line and the total effort line. The chart makes it simple to track, modify and ideally improve a team’s work process. Below infographic lists the benefits of Burn-up chart.

Chart, pie chart

Description automatically generated

 

Burn-down Charts

Burn-down Charts are used to track amount of work pending or remaining in a scrum project. Teams can track story points completed to check the speed of project or effort to check how the expected delivery date compares to the actual one.

The above Burn-down chart depicts an example of a project that was expected to be over in the 10th sprint but actually took 12 sprints. The Actual line depicts how much, and in which sprint the speed of the project was impacted.

Since the Burn-down charts are more basic than Burn-up charts, it is very appropriate for teams who just want to know about the project progress (at any given time).

On the other hand, the Burn-up chart is a great tool for those teams who want to look in-depth at how the Project Manager managed the entire project throughout the timeline.

In all, once you decide which chart is more useful for your team, you can then start working towards integrating the same into your project lifecycle. Both charts will help you to update your team and stakeholders regularly so that you can have the team members working towards a common objective or goal.

Upcoming: Scrum Boards (Agile series part 6)

Read the other blogs in the series of Agile: 

An Alliance with Agile 

6 Best Practices your Agile Team should Adopt

Agile: Use Cases v/s User Stories

Which Agile Methodology should you use?: Scrum, Kanban or Lean

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