Burndown Charts

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 does not have any remaining story points and after it has been accepted by a product owner. A sprint can be considered complete when the total story points to which the team committed reaches zero or when the time allotted to the sprint (1-4 weeks) runs out. Ideally, this occurs on the last working day of the sprint. Stories not completed in time are not accepted by the product owner and are moved to a subsequent sprint. Working days in a sprint are defined by the working days in your organization's company calendar.

Burndown charts can be useful at several points within the agile lifecycle: during a release, during a sprint, and for a specific task.

Sprint A sprint Burndown is useful for tracking what remains to be done during the sprint, whether that's total work hours remaining, or total story points remaining, or the metric that your organization finds the most useful. Serena Agile On Demand tracks burndowns using story points, by default. It is important for all members of the team to ensure this metric is up-to-date before attending daily standup.
Task A task Burndown is useful for tracking progress against a specific task. Not every agile team breaks stories down into tasks.