A Burn-down Chart visualizes the remaining work over time, while a Burn-up Chart shows progress toward the overall goal by indicating how much work has been completed. Both are transparency tools, but they are not official Scrum artifacts—rather recommended practices widely used in the agile community.
Origin and Purpose
Burn-down and Burn-up charts emerged from Scrum practice and were popularized by Ken Schwaber and Mike Cohn. They support empirical process control by:
- making progress visible in real time,
- surfacing problems such as bottlenecks or overcommitments,
- fostering communication between the team and stakeholders.
Core Elements
- X-axis: Time (sprint days, iterations, weeks).
- Y-axis: Remaining or completed effort (story points, tasks, business value).
- Burn-down: Displays remaining work, often against an “ideal” trend line.
- Burn-up: Displays completed work versus total scope, explicitly showing scope changes.
Application and Best Practices
- Team ownership: Updated regularly, often during Daily Scrum.
- Levels: Burn-down at sprint, release, or PI level; Burn-up at program or ART level.
- Interpretation, not prediction: Charts indicate trends, not precise forecasts.
- Prefer Burn-up for scope changes: More transparent when backlog scope fluctuates.
- Link to Definition of Done: Only truly completed work counts as burned down or built up.
Practice Examples
Scrum team: In a 2-week sprint, the Burn-down shows 80% of work still open by day 7. The team identifies dependency on testing and addresses it.
Automotive (SAFe): An ART uses a Burn-up during a PI to show that 30% new scope was added, explaining why not all planned objectives were met.
Banking sector: A Burn-up chart was applied to regulatory programs where requirements changed dynamically.
Transformation programs: CALADE applies Burn-up charts to track Transformation Increments and highlight scope changes, increasing stakeholder confidence.
Criticism and Limitations
- Risk of misuse: Can be misapplied for micromanagement instead of transparency.
- Output vs. outcome: Charts track delivery, not actual business value.
- Over-simplification: Reduces complex reality to a single line, creating false confidence.
- Quality not represented: Charts don’t show whether results meet the Definition of Done.
- Team maturity critical: Inexperienced teams may interpret them as pressure tools.
Embedding and Combination
- Scrum: Commonly used for sprint or release monitoring.
- SAFe: Burn-up charts are recommended at ART and Solution Train levels, e.g., in PI System Demos.
- Kanban: Complemented by Cumulative Flow Diagrams (CFDs) that also visualize bottlenecks and WIP.
- Transformations: Burn-up charts can visualize progress in change programs, similar to product development.
CALADE Perspective
At CALADE, Burn-down and Burn-up charts are deliberately used as communication and learning tools. Especially in large-scale transformations, Burn-up charts provide transparency on both progress and scope changes, strengthening trust in the change process.
Cross-References
- Sprint (Scrum)
- Sprint Backlog
- Increment
- Velocity
- Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD)
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