0

I'm developing an app for agile projects management, and I'm wondering what is the measure unit of a Burndown Chart... Wikipedia's article states that it measures the number of tasks remaining each period of time, but I've seen people using it with tasks, features, function/use case points...

Is there a measure unit that is considered "right" or standard between these? Or is it all by choice?

ViniciusPires
  • 983
  • 3
  • 12
  • 26
  • This question is off-topic because it's not within the scope for this site, as defined in [What topics can I ask about here?](//stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) Also see: [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](//stackoverflow.com/help/dont-ask) You may be able to ask on [another Stack Exchange site](//stackexchange.com/sites#name), *perhaps* [pm.se] or [softwareengineering.se]. Be sure to read the help center's on-topic page for any site on which you intend to post a question. – Makyen Nov 22 '17 at 23:59

2 Answers2

2

Simply, the burndown chart shows work remaining at a point in time.

The x-axis is usually time and the y-axis is usually work.

For a Sprint Burndown, time is most often expressed in days and work is expressed in task hours

For a Release Burndown, time is often expressed in Sprints and work is expressed in Story Points

Derek Davidson PST CST
  • 1,799
  • 12
  • 17
  • But in the Sprint Burndown, what happens if I spend 8 hours in a task that should take 1 hour? Would the other 7 hours count as "work done"? – ViniciusPires Oct 03 '13 at 12:59
  • 1
    @ViniciusPires : No. They'd only count as one hour. The Sprint Burndown is only interested in how much work *remains* to be done at a given point in time. (nb: If you increased the time for this task to 8 hours, you'd need to increase the start point by 8 hours as well and the final effect on when you would deliver would still be the same.) – Derek Davidson PST CST Oct 03 '13 at 14:49
1

I have typically seen brundown charts in terms of story points. Story points are used as a measure of complexity of a story and is a numeric value with no unit. The burndown chart starts at the agreed upon velocity on the y-axis and burns down to zero as a function of time. If stories are added during the sprint you may burn into the negative numbers of the y-axis to represent the total velocity.

The goal is to have the burndown follow a linear trend line, but that is hard to achieve since it would mean that everyone must complete the same amount of points per time unit every day

TGH
  • 38,769
  • 12
  • 102
  • 135