Report: Iteration Burndown |
The iteration burndown shows the trend for how much work is left to do within that iteration.
Relationships
Related Elements | Work Items List Iteration Plan
Main Description
The iteration burndown is a primary tool for understanding the status of an iteration. It shows the trend for how much work is left to do within that iteration. This is done by adding up the estimated effort left for each of the work items to be addressed within the iteration, and showing how the estimated effort is changing over the duration of the iteration. The iteration backlog should be updated frequently, ideally daily. Factors that impact the team’s assessment of work left include: Work has been completed, which means that less work is left to do. The developer responsible for a work item changes their assessment of effort required to complete the work item. This should be expected, since we typically understand what it really takes to complete a task first when we have done a subset of the task. Especially, it is common that estimates of work left increases in the beginning of the iteration, especially for inexperienced teams, since they often underestimate efforts. As teams become more experienced, you would expect that they may still have to modify estimates, but the modifications are as frequently upward as downward. Estimated effort left can increase during the iteration, as a result of the team learning more about what needs to be done. Daily or frequent updates to the iteration burndown allows the team to react to changes, by for example cutting scope by removing work items from the iteration, by reducing the ambition level associated with a work item, or by finding more clever ways of approaching work items, such as having an expert team member help out with troubled work items. See ex_iteration_burndown.xls for an example iteration burndown report.
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