Sprint Burndown (Scrum)

By reviewing a sprint burndown report, you can track how much work remains in a sprint backlog, understand how quickly your team has completed tasks, and predict when your team will achieve the goal or goals of the sprint.

Note

This report requires that the team project collection that contains your team project was provisioned with SQL Server Reporting Services. This report is not available if Report Reports does not appear when you open Team Explorer and expand your team project node. 

In this topic

Required Permissions

To view the report, you must be assigned or belong to a group that has been assigned the Browser role in SQL Server Reporting Services. For more information, see Add Users to Team Projects or Managing Permissions.

Data in the Report

A sprint burndown report shows how much work remained at the end of specified intervals during a sprint. The source of the raw data is the sprint backlog. The horizontal axis shows days in a sprint, and the vertical axis measures the amount of work that remains to complete the tasks in the sprint. The work that remains is shown in hours.

A sprint burndown graph displays the following pieces of data:

  • The Ideal Trend line indicates an ideal situation in which the team burns down all of the effort that remains at a constant rate by the end of the sprint.

  • The In Progress series shows how many hours remain for tasks that are marked as In Progress in a sprint.

  • The To Do series shows how many hours remain for tasks that are marked as To Do in a sprint.

Both the In Progress and the To Do series are drawn based on the actual progress of your team as it completes tasks.

The following illustration shows an example of a sprint burndown graph.

Screenshot showing a sprint burndown chart

You can filter the report by specifying the fields above the burndown graph:

  • Specify the appropriate sprint from the Sprint list.

  • Specify the appropriate area path from the Area list.

Required Activities for Tracking Work Items

For the burndown report to be useful and accurate, your team must perform the following activities for tracking tasks:

  • Define tasks, and specify their Iteration and Area paths.

    For more information, see Create and Modify Areas and Iterations.

  • Specify and update the Remaining Work field for each task or subtask as it is worked on.

    Important

    If you divide a task into subtasks, specify hours only for the subtasks. These hours are rolled up as summary values for the parent task. For more information, see Address Inaccuracies Published for Summary Values.

  • Update the State of each task as it progresses from To Do to Done.

Interpreting the Report

You can review the report to determine the progress that your team has made in a release and answer the following questions:

  • How much work remains in the sprint?

  • Is your team on track to finish all work for the sprint?

  • When will your team finish all work for the sprint?

  • How much work for the sprint is in progress?

See Also

Concepts

Create, Customize, and Manage Reports for Visual Studio ALM

Task (Scrum)

Product Backlog Item (Scrum)

Other Resources

Scrum Process Template for Visual Studio ALM