How to read a Burn-down chart

How to read a Burn-down chart

Why Burn-down Chart?

Burn-down chart is a simple and yet a very powerful tool to view/monitor/make visible your team’s progress. I’ve never see any other report that can show me the teams progress in 5 seconds.

How do you read a Burn-down Chart?

             1)   The Y axis shows the remaining effort (in hours) required to complete the Release (400 to 0).

             2)   The X axis shows the number of days until the Sprint ends (e.g. Jan 13 in the image)

             3)   The Blue line is the ideal scenario. the team has 400 hours available to Burn-down @ 40 hrs each    day. This Blue line will drop 40 hrs every day e.g. 400, 360, 320, 280 …. 40, 0.
       4) The Red line is your actual Burn-down. This should reflect the hours remaining and Not the hours spent. A common mistake teams do is that they update hours spent and not hours remaining and this makes the Burn-down useless.
      E.g. I have 400 hours available for this release & on day 1 the team spent 40 hrs..now does that mean I have 360 remaining on Day 2? Well..NO
      The team may spend 40 hrs on these tasks but may require another 20 hrs to complete it. This means your Burn down for Day 2 should read 380 and not 360.

How to read this chart in 5 seconds?

   1)      If your red line (actual Burn-down) is overlapping the blue line (planned Burn-down) then your project is on schedule.

    2)      If your red line (actual Burn-down) is below the blue line (planned Burn-down) then your project is ahead of schedule.

    3) If your red line (actual Burn-down) is above the blue line (planned Burn-down) then your project is not going to meet its release date

Isn’t this simple!