Sprint Burn-down Vs Sprint Burn-up

Sprint burn-down and Sprint burn-up charts are used by development teams to capture the progress of work with respect to the sprint goal. It helps the team in understanding where they stand today and how much they have to achieve to meet the goal.

One can use either sprint burn-down or sprint burn-up as per the team’s choice. Both graphs are good information radiators that help the team inspect the progress toward the sprint goal and adapt the changes required to achieve the goal.

Sprint Burn-down:

In Sprint burn-down, we see how much work is left out at a given moment. In the above graph, Y-axis represents the Sprint scope and X-axis represents the number of days. The team committed to completing 76 story points in 15 working days sprint.

The blue line indicates the ideal scenario of the way stories should be completed in a sprint. The red line indicates the actuals where on the 6th day, the remaining scope is 57 story points and it also indicates that we are behind the schedule and if we go by the same rate, we will not be able to achieve our sprint goal.

Let’s take one more scenario. The green line in the above graph indicates that at 4th day of the sprint, the remaining scope is 55 story points and it also indicates that we are ahead of schedule and if we go by the same rate, we will be able to achieve our goal well before time. Let me explain by analogy, In Cricket, if we are chasing the target means we are batting second.

Where batsman should be focussed on?

How much he/she has scored? OR How much is left to be scored?

At that moment, the batsman doesn’t focus on how much/she has scored but they focus on how much is left over to win the match. A similar approach goes with the sprint burndown chart where one focuses on how much is left over to achieve the sprint goal.

Sprint burn-up:

Now, when it comes to the burn-up chart, the focus is on how much work is completed. Like, in the below graph, the red line depicts that 19 story points have been achieved by the 6th day of the sprint. If we go by this rate, we will not be able to meet our sprint goal.

Whereas, in the below graph, the green line illustrates that if we go by the same pace, we will be able to achieve our goal well before time.

The same analogy applies to the burnup chart as well. If we are batting first, our focus will be on how many batsmen have scored so far and also predict how much can be scored in the remaining overs.

If you need more information, reach out to me at info@leanpitch.com

Reference: Knowledge gained during CSM Certification Workshop by Leanpitch