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Analyzing work completed in a sprint using the Burn Up Chart

Let us consider a simple scenario to understand how you can use the Burn Up chart to analyze how much work has been completed in a sprint.

Consider Jill, a Project Manager, who handles a team of developers, testers, and UI engineers. Jill's team works in an agile environment where, resources work on multiple projects simultaneously. Project Managers, across functions, often use two types of charts to track the progress of their projects. One is the burn down chart which shows how much work is remaining at the end of a sprint; and the other one is the burn up chart which shows how much work was completed in a given sprint.

At the end of every sprint, Jill can use the Burn Up chart to gain insights into the following parameters:

• Number of work items that was completed in the sprint
• A snapshot of the backlog for the month
• Work Items that were completed along with the priority of the work item.

Within the Work Item Burn Up Chart, Jill has access to information in three different graphs:

• Monthly Work Item Burn Up Chart: Which displays a line graph to show the number of work items that were completed in a given month, number of work items that remained in the backlog at the end of a month, and a snapshot of the cumulative number of work items addressed at the end of the month.
• Backlog Work Items: Which displays a list of the work items in the backlog along with the priority of the work item and a brief Summary.
• Completed Work Items: Which displays a list of the work items that have been completed along with the priority of the work item and a brief summary about the work item.

Jill can switch tabs to the Story Points Burn Up page to view the same set of graphs plotted on the basis of story points instead of number of work items.

The Business Value Burn Up page, similarly, displays graphs plotted on the basis of business value.

Following is a sample burn up chart:

Analyzing the Burn Up Chart

The line graphs in the Burn Up dashboard can give valuable insights. Some of the analyses that Jill can look for are:

• Sudden upward spikes in the burn up charts - can mean that the resources are not regularly updating their work items to reflect the current status
• Sudden upward spikes could also mean that the work items are being resolved on the last day of the sprint
• A steady (more or less) line graph indicates a healthy project
• Sudden downward spikes could mean that work items are being added to the sprint in an ad-hoc manner which needs to be addressed.