Burndown Chart, narrates you a story

Burndown chart

Burndown chart provides remaining effort for a given period of time. This is one of the simplest metrics team normally adopt to measure the progress of sprint or release.

It also represent the velocity at which you are completing your customer stories.

During a typical development life cycle, following two flavors of burn down chart can be used:
1. Sprint Burndown and
2. Release Burndown

Scope of the article is to describe Sprint Burn down and narrate a story to your stakeholders

Expected Burndown chart
Assumptions
a. Lets assume that team will complete a project with all user/customer stories in  Nine iterations.
b. Scrum team burns 10 pts of story size in an iteration. This is a velocity of scrum team

It shows amount of work remaining and work done during each iteration.

Ideal Burn down chart

Legends:
Y-Axis: Work Remaining
X- Axis: Effort (in story points)

Such a simple brundown chart can tell you following story about the progress:
1. Current iteration = 6th
2. Remaining iterations = 3
3. You and your team have completed 40 story points of effort
4. Looking at the burn down chart you can narrate following story:

"Team has maintained a velocity of 10 story points and will complete the user/customer stories right on time. No major defects re introduced in the product and team is able to take care of them efficiently"  

In reality - How a burn down chart look

Team never sees an ideal burn down chart. The velocity of the team changes every iteration and there is no straight line trend.
Each sprint demonstration or QA process results in a change to the development. This change could because of many reasons, for now let me consider the below two probable cause:

a. Defects identified and reported
b. Feedback from end of sprint demo

Thus effecting : a. Scope, b. Time, c. Cost and Quality of deliverable.


Below image shows a typical Burndown of a project?

Above chart is a result of one or more causes listed below (not limited to below list):

1. Scope discovery
2. Team member leaves the project
3. Natural disaster
4. Scope creep (function creep, feature creep, requirement creep,..)
5. Requirement change
6.  Reported bugs/defect in the system

I have a story for my stakeholders by just looking at above burn down chart.


- See more at about Burndown chart @ scrumalliance.org 

Why PMP is very effective for project managers?

Today’s situation demands and expects you to be on top of deliverable's within the required guidelines. Monitoring,controlling, resource management and preparing project status reports are not the only tools used in the world of project management.

I started managing projects without formal project management training and I met the expectations by delivering the projects successfully. As I moved further on the career path, I was expected to manage complex projects. While working on one such project, I realized that the number of working hours had gone up. I took a step back and identified various knowledge gaps ineffective utilization of project management tools and techniques. That is when I realized the need for formal education.

My journey to PMP

My organization has a ‘continuing education program’ for employees. I grabbed the opportunity with both hands and signed up for training to obtain contact hours required for PMP® certification from Project Management Institute (PMI)®. While preparing for the examination, the PMBOK® Guide exposed me to standard processes, tools and techniques. The study helped me become familiar with project management jargon and learn the base vocabulary of project management. For PMP exam preparation tips and know more about PMBOK® Guide, you may refer to this article.

Preparing for PMP equips a project manager in delivering complex projects within manufacturing, service, governmental or non-profit organizations. It helps you to handle projects effectively, irrespective of the domain or industry. The skills acquired during the journey to PMP certification helped me gain confidence with regard to communication, stakeholder and risk management. The PMBOK® Guide made me understand  the importance of these Knowledge Areas and implement them effectively. I was able to identify critical risks and communicate them to stakeholders at an appropriate time. My approach towards a problem statement or change management changed. I am now more  process-oriented during project execution.

The journey to PMP helped me understand the relationship between Process Groups and Knowledge Areas that span across the entire project lifecycle. I do not work on every Knowledge Area or Process Group during a project assignment, but PMP certification equipped me to manage any project at any phase of its lifecycle.

I recently read this article that explains the benefits of PMP quite well.

Spreading the knowledge

Because I went through the certification process, I have been playing a vital role in implementing the standardized set of project management best practices in my projects.

After obtaining a PMP certification, I am in a better position to teach other team members about various project management tools and techniques. It not only helps me to spread knowledge to others, it also earns me professional development units (PDUs) as part of ‘continuing education program’. I intend to keep my credential alive by earning the requisite PDUs.

To me, the benefits of PMP have been many. If you are a practicing project manager with requisite work experience, you too can get the credential. Click here

(Pavas Malviya, PMP, has 11+ years of experience in the IT industry. He currently works with an MNC as Senior Consultant on Energy Trading  and Risk Management Practice. The views expressed in this article are personal, and do not necessarily reflect the views of PMI or PMPlanet.)

Refer my articles on

https://vox.publicis.sapient.com/groups/pm/blog/2014/09/04/why-pmp-is-very-effective-for-project-managers