Samir AlamProject Management Consultant| SECDammam, Dammam, Saudi Arabia
Hi, I have came across a term '' cumulative story points burn down chart '' which shows total story poinst completed through the end of each iteration,- definition given in source. But as per pmi agile practice guide Burn up chart shown total completed story points. can anyone clarify on it. Thanks in advance Saving Changes...
I can't say which came first, but in my 2007 CSM class we covered burndown charts - a burndown chart tied to the sprint backlog, and a cumulative burndown chart tied to the product backlog. It was a few years later when I was introduced to burnup charts, with the major difference, other than the direction of the line, being a second line to show the amount of work the team is trying to achieve.
With a burnup chart, you're going from 0 to 45 points (for example) and if more work is added you can see where that took place and the new target. With a burndown chart you're going from 45 points to 0; it can be difficult to distinguish between stories taking longer than expected and new work being added.
There's probably more to it, but this has been my experience. Saving Changes...
Cumulative burn chart (AKA product burn chart) shows the progress through the backlog over successive iterations. A sprint burn chart shows progress over a single iteration.
Sprint burn chart may perhaps be of interest to the team but isn't really a good way to communicate progress to external stakeholders. In fact it can be very misleading. Product burn chart is much more useful as a way of demonstrating progress and productivity.
Either type of burn chart can be either burn up (trending toward some goal or goals) or down (trending toward zero). Burn up is superior for most purposes because it shows the true velocity and isn't distorted by any changes in scope. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
My recommendation: go to Mike Cohns´s website. Is the best source I found for this type of things, no matter I can write a lot based on my personal experience. Saving Changes...
A burn up chart can be used interchangeable with a burn down chart. Both can be used at the release, project or sprint level. In the case of a cumulative burn down chart, you'd most likely be looking at a release or the project as a whole. The X axis will be sprints or some other measure of time and the Y axis will be story points. You'd start with the total estimated size of the release or project backlog and then sprint over sprint (or time period over time period) you'd update it to reflect how much work had been burned down as well as how much had been added.
It is cumulative in that it will accumulate the deductions based on all sprints or time periods completed to date.
Kiron
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1 reply by Samir Alam
Mar 26, 2021 4:09 PM
Samir Alam
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I feel your explanation is closer to my query which I understood that the cumulative burndown chart and burn down chart if both given as options to choose either one to be used for seeing completed story points at the end of each sprint or seeing overall progress on release level, then the best answer shall be cumulative burndown chart.
Saving Changes...
Samir AlamProject Management Consultant| SECDammam, Dammam, Saudi Arabia
Mar 24, 2021 6:09 PM
Replying to Kiron Bondale
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Samir -
A burn up chart can be used interchangeable with a burn down chart. Both can be used at the release, project or sprint level. In the case of a cumulative burn down chart, you'd most likely be looking at a release or the project as a whole. The X axis will be sprints or some other measure of time and the Y axis will be story points. You'd start with the total estimated size of the release or project backlog and then sprint over sprint (or time period over time period) you'd update it to reflect how much work had been burned down as well as how much had been added.
It is cumulative in that it will accumulate the deductions based on all sprints or time periods completed to date.
Kiron
I feel your explanation is closer to my query which I understood that the cumulative burndown chart and burn down chart if both given as options to choose either one to be used for seeing completed story points at the end of each sprint or seeing overall progress on release level, then the best answer shall be cumulative burndown chart. Saving Changes...
While burndown and burnup charts may be used interchangeably, they represent different goals.
The goal of a burndown chart is to reduce outstanding work, like in the case of a backlog. Whether it is late deliverables, or a backlog, the outstanding total of items to "burn down" may keep having more items added to the total. If you added 5 items this week and closed 6, you're only showing a net change of -1.
With a burnup chart, you are counting things completed with a fixed target. If you added 5 items this week, closed 6, and have a goal of 30 items to close this month, then your net change is +5, your goal is still 30, and you would need to set a later goal to close more items.
When the total number of things to be completed changes over time, but your goal is to reduce them to zero or some fixed number, typically you would use a burndown chart because it shows how you are converging on or diverging from the fixed target. Saving Changes...
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