Release Burndown Chart in Scrum

Release Burndown Chart

There are lots of project methodologies and one such methodology is the Scrum. Scrum is part of the agile framework which is an incremental sprint with the number of iterations to produce the products as per the requirements of the customer. 

A product owner is a person who oversees the scrum with the help of the scrum master. The role of the product owner is to do the sprint planning, product backlog set up and prioritize the items in the product backlog bucket, facilitate the work of the sprint backlog with the help of scrum master and scrum team and also define the definition of done in the board so that each incremental sprints meet the customer requirements and his expectations.  

The product owner for the project allocates the resources to the scrum master and the project manager, he does the budgeting and exhibit leadership at all stages of the scrum and follows agile methodology. To know more about the product owner’s duties take up the Certified Scrum Product Owner Online Training at StarAgile institute.

The product owner is responsible for client interactions and does the requirements gathering in the initial stages. He participates in the daily scrum meetings and other scrum meetings. He solves the issues in the scrum and sprints early in the stages with the help of blockers and other scrum metrics. In this article, we will see what releases a burndown chart with examples and advantages is.

Release Burndown Chart Explained with Examples 

A release burndown chart is the scrum tool that focuses on the release efforts over every sprint cycle. There are several burndown charts that we will see in this article such as the sprint burndown chart and product burndown chart along with the release burndown chart. In this chart, the sprints are plotted in the x-axis and remaining efforts or the release efforts on the y-axis. The efforts are measured in hours or days or story points. The scrum master updates the release burndown chart with actual progress made at the end of each sprint before the next sprint starts.

Example: A website development for a customer has to be made ready. The effort is sprint into a 2-week long sprint. There ideally 3 sprints are required or 6 weeks of efforts for the first version of the website to be ready

There are 2 people on the team. Each person producing 6 hours of work equal to 6*5 hours = 30 hours weekly per person. The total ideal efforts equal to 2*30 = 60 hours. This is equal to 60*2 = 120 hours for a two-week-long sprint and 360 hours for the release. Having the 6 hours daily gives the development team to relax and spend time on their organizational commitments without affecting the progress of the development.

The release burndown chart can be plotted as a line chart. The y-axis consists of hours and sprints on the x-axis. There are two lines one green and another red. The red line is the ideal time, and the green line is the effort remaining. If the green line is plotted is below the red line then the team is accomplishing tasks as planned in the sprints. If the green line is above the red line then it shows that the team is behind the schedule and tasks are not completed as planned in the sprint chart. To know more about the various scrum tools register for Scrum Product Owner Certification at StarAgile. The release burndown chart is shown in the diagram below,

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Product Burndown Chart and Sprint Burndown Chart 

Product Burndown Chart

The product burndown chart is the chart that is plotted with the story points of all the user stories in the y-axis and the sprint numbers on the x-axis. It provides the product backlog visualization of completed requirements over time.  The product burndown chart is updated at the end of each sprint and new user stories are added before the sprint planning meeting. The user stories can be added and removed in the sprint can be depicted in the chart.

The product burndown chart tells us 2 things, how much user stories can be completed in the remaining time and how many sprints are required to complete all the remaining user stories.

Once some of the user stories have been completed the remaining working hours for the remaining user stories can be seen and also the velocity of the team may be known.

Sprint Burndown Chart

A Sprint Burndown Chart shows the sprint backlog tasks or the remaining work for a particular sprint. The sprint backlog contains all the tasks for the current sprint. It is updated on the daily basis before the stand-up meeting of the next day. It is plotted with time in working days in the x-axis and remaining work in hours in the y-axis. This chart provides us a clear picture of whether all the tasks can be completed before the current sprint ends. Learn how to make various charts by undergoing Product Owner Training at StarAgile.

Benefits of Scrum Release Burndown

The advantages of using the burndown chart are as follows,

• The visualization of the progress made and workflow can be done using the burndown charts
• It clearly shows the achievement of the team and what it needs to achieve
• The chart helps the team to know if everything is proceeding smoothly and within the set time
• The issues and problems can be found out using the chart very early and action can be taken on them
• It helps to focus the team's efforts in the right direction
• It motivates the team on their work
• It shows the team the success of the particular sprint, tasks, and projects.

Conclusion

As you have seen the importance of the burndown chart and what release burndown chart is? To explore further the product owner’s roles and responsibility and for aspiring product owners, we recommend that you take up the CSPO Certification Online at StarAgile. 

StarAgile is the training partner for the Product Owner Certification with Scrum Alliance Inc. StarAgile has excellent training instructors who have vast industrial experience and are themselves certified.