A burndown chart is a simple way of measuring a team's progress during a sprint by comparing the working days in the sprint to the total number of story points to which the team committed. A story is considered complete when it has zero story points remaining and has been accepted by the product owner. A sprint can be considered complete when the total story points to which the team committed reaches zero. Ideally, this occurs on the last working day of the sprint. Working days in a sprint are defined by the working days in your organization's company calendar.
A burndown chart can be useful at several points within the Agile lifecycle: during a release, during a sprint, and for a specific task. A release burndown chart is useful for tracking the progress of a release by using a single metric (such as total story points remaining or total work hours remaining) and comparing it against the original total toward which the team has made a commitment. As team members update this metric for any individual work item they are assigned, the release burndown chart is updated to show the overall progress of the team.
Serena Agile On Demand includes an out-of-the-box release burndown chart as part of the Tracking module. The release burndown chart is used to view the current status of the release, sorted by sprint in the related backlog pane. An out-of-the-box burndown chart will show the backlog from which the burndown chart is based as part of the release, sprint, and task burndown chart views.
