Charts are a powerful way to visualize data, making it easier to track progress, monitor workloads, and analyze statistics in a clear and comparable manner. In Agile project management, 02 essential types of charts that cannot be overlooked are the Burn-down Chart and the Burn-up Chart. So, when should you use a Burn-down Chart, and when is a Burn-up Chart more appropriate? The answer largely depends on what you are trying to achieve. Let's take a closer look at these 2 chart types with Atoha to use them most effectively through the article below.

Definition

The Burn-down Chart and Burn-up Chart are two types of visual tools commonly used by project managers to track and communicate project progress. A Burn-down Chart shows the amount of work remaining in a project, whereas a Burn-up Chart displays how much work has been completed and the total scope of work. These charts are particularly widely used in software project management practices, particularly within Agile and Scrum frameworks. More specifically:

• Burn-down charts help teams know the remaining work: Once a team has assigned story point values to all user stories in the sprint backlog, they can use a Burn-down Chart to manage the progress of ongoing sprints. A Burn-down Chart is a simple line graph that shows how many story points are completed each day during the Sprint. It gives people a clear view of the amount of work remaining at any given time. By using a burn-down chart, everyone on the team can see how far they are from reaching the Sprint goal.

• Burn-up charts show project progress and scope separately: Another way to track Sprint progress is to use a Burn-up Chart. Instead of subtracting the number of completed story points, the Burn-up Chart records the total points accumulated throughout the Sprint, while displaying the total project scope on a separate line. When stories are added or removed from the scope, it is clear by looking at the scope line. When stories are added up in the “Done” column on the task board, the team can also easily notice it by looking at the total number of points that have been burned up during the Sprint. Since scope is tracked on a different line than completed points, it is more obvious when the scope changes.

These two types of charts can be easily created manually using pen and paper, or they can be generated by entering data into tools such as Excel or project management software like Jira, among others.

Why use these two charts?

• For the Burn-up Chart:

  • Burn-up charts are an effective tool for communicating with project stakeholders and customers about how additional feature requests may impact the project’s deadline. It also provides visibility into whether progress is being made as expected. In a project where customers frequently add a lot of work mid-project, the Burn-down Chart may fail to accurately reflect the team's actual output, potentially leading to questions about performance. To address this, the Burn-up Chart allows customers to clearly see how scope changes affect the timeline, prompting them to reassess whether those additional features are truly necessary.

• For the Burn-down Chart:

  • The popularity of Burn-down Charts stems from their simplicity. It is a simple concept to see that the amount of work remaining should reach zero by a specific target date. Burn-down Charts are useful tools for explaining and demonstrating project progress to any audience, regardless of their experience level in project management. Therefore, it is often a smart choice to create a burndown chart for use in presentations and demonstrations to clients and non-technical management.

  • Some managers also consider Burn-down Charts as motivational tools. Seeing the remaining work steadily approach zero can encourage and energize team members, and clearly demonstrate that progress is being made.

Application of Burn-up and Burn-down Charts

The key factor in deciding whether to use a Burn-up Chart or a Burn-down Chart depends on the specific information needs of the project.

• Simplicity versus Information

  • The Burn-down Chart is very simple. It features a single line that steadily approaches zero as the project nears completion. This simplicity makes it easily understandable by anyone, requiring little to no explanation. However, it may lack important informationg, such as the impact of scope changes.

  • Scope changes occur when work is added to or removed from a project. We are all familiar with scope changes: customers may suddenly request additional features or remove certain tasks in order to meet deadlines. Burn-down charts do not show this information as clearly as Burn-up charts do.

  • Burn-up charts track completed work and total work using two separate lines, unlike burn-down charts that combine them into a single line. The overall scope line conveys critical information – that the project remains incomplete either due to slow progress or because too much new work is being added. This information can be essential for diagnosing and resolving project issues.

• Presenting project progress on a regular basis

  • If the team is presenting project progress to the same audience on a regular basis, such as weekly progress meetings with customer, Burn-up Chart can be particularly useful. It enables customers to clearly see that the team is making progress, even when they are adding more work to the project.

• Convincing customers to stabilize the project scope

  • Scope creep is the enemy of any software project. When scope creep occurs, the Burn-up Chart makes scope issues highly visible to customers. This can even help the team convince them to stop requesting changes and allow the project to be completed.

• Projects with a fixed scope

  • In some limited cases, a project may have a well-defined fixed scope. If a project is guaranteed to have a fixed scope, the Burn-up Chart does not add much additional value compared to the Burn-down Chart. In such cases, the simplicity of the Burn-down Chart becomes a greater advantage and is often the preferred choice.

Common Limitations

• Burn-down Charts only show the number of story points completed - it does not reflect any changes in project scope as measured by the total number of points in the backlog. Therefore, it is difficult to know whether changes in the Burn-down Chart are due to completed backlog items or simply the result of an increase (or less commonly, a decrease) in the story points of certain user stories.

• A team may have a Burn-down Chart that reflects steady progress, but it doesn't indicate whether the team is doing the right things. For this reason, both Burn-down and Burn-up Charts are better suited for showing trends rather than providing clear indications of whether a team is delivering the product backlog appropriate.

Conclusion

The Burn-down Chart and Burn-up Chart are two valuable visual tools that are always used throughout Agile project work. They help track progress, improve workflows, and increase team productivity. Therefore, integrating these charts into day-to-day operations is essential for ensuring smoother task execution and increasing the likelihood of delivering work effectively. Ultimately, they help shorten the time it takes to reach project goals.

Knowledge compiled by Trainer Nguyễn Hải Hà (PMP^®, PMI-ACP^®, PMI-ATP Instructor, PSM II) 

References: Head First Agile, linkedin.com, agilealliance.org

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