Examples of Sprint Burndown

Analyze the sprint burndown to improve the planning of future sprints in Agile product development. The sprint burndown graph captures planned hours from the project plan and actual hours from the progress reported by team members.

The following information must be available before you can analyze sprint burndown for your Agile scrum team:

• Project plan with tasks created from backlog items.

• Sprint when the backlog items will be worked on.

• Planned hours for project tasks.

• Actual hours reported by team members on tasks.

• Updated sprint burndown graph with latest data.

The following example scenarios are based on the story points assigned to backlog items at the start of the sprint.

Actual Hours are Greater Than Ideal Hours

The team consumes more hours on tasks in the sprint than originally planned.

This figure shows that the actual hours remaining line is above the ideal hours remaining line, and the distance between the two lines is increasing. This can indicate that you over estimated the backlog items the team can achieve in a sprint, and some of the backlog items planned for the sprint won't be completed. Based on this, scrum masters and product owners must move any incomplete backlog items in the current sprint to the next sprint and reprioritize the backlog items at the start of the next sprint.

Some possible reasons why the hours consumed is greater than the ideal hours:

• Over estimation of planned backlog items for the sprint based on complexity.

• Unknown issues that took time to resolve.

• Dependencies on deliverables of other teams.

Actual Hours are Ideal

The team consumes the expected number of hours on tasks in the sprint.

This figure shows that the actual hours remaining line overlaps the ideal hours remaining line. This indicates that your planned hours are accurate, so the team can complete the planned backlog items in a sprint, and consume the planned hours by the end of the sprint.

Less variation between and ideal and actual remaining hours indicates that the scrum team can accurately assess backlog item complexity and arrive at the number of hours required to complete work in a sprint.

Actual Hours are Less Than Ideal Hours

The team consumes less hours on tasks in the sprint than originally planned.

This figure shows that the actual hours remaining line is below the ideal hours remaining line, and the distance between the two lines is increasing. This helps you predict that the team will complete the planned backlog items for the sprint early and they can work with the product owner to identify the next most important backlog item from the product backlog.

A possible reason why hours consumed are less than ideal is that you under estimated backlog item complexity and planned more time than required to complete work in the sprint.