Configure and monitor sprint burndown

Throughout your sprint, you can monitor the sprint burndown report to determine if your team is on track to complete its sprint plan. There are two sprint accessible burndown charts: the in-context Burndown Trend report viewable from a team sprint backlog and the Sprint Burndown widget that you can add to a dashboard.

Both the report and the widget derive data from Analytics. They support monitoring burndown based on a count of work items or a sum of Story Points/Size/Effort, Remaining Work, or other numeric field.

You can add either the report or widget to a dashboard. Also, you can monitor progress using the Analytics-based burndown or burnup widgets. They provide more configuration options.

Throughout your sprint, you can monitor the sprint burndown report to determine if your team is on track to complete its sprint plan. The in-context sprint burndown report supports tracking burndown based on Remaining Work assigned to sprint tasks. If you don't track tasks or Remaining Work, then you can use the Analytics-based burndown and burnup widgets. They provide more configuration options.

For an overview of all burndown and burnup charts available to you, see Burndown and burnup guidance.

The Burndown Trend report is based on either a count of tasks or remaining work estimates, or other numeric fields that you define and update throughout the sprint cycle. For details, see Sprint planning. To open this report, see Open a Sprint backlog.

A healthy sprint burndown report looks something like the image shown here. The blue area indicates the number of work items active or in progress each day of the sprint. As shown in this example, one work item is still active at the end of the sprint.

Because individual team members might only update their work items once a week or every few days, there's usually a stair-case burndown pattern.

The in-context sprint burndown report is based on the tasks and Remaining Work estimates that you define and update throughout the sprint cycle. For details, see Sprint planning and taskboard. To open the sprint burndown chart, see Open sprint burndown chart.

In the widget catalog, you find two versions of the Sprint Burndown widget: the Analytics-based Sprint Burndown and Sprint Burndown (Legacy), which is built from the work tracking data store.

Sprint Burndown widget

The Analytics-based Sprint Burndown widget provides an easy way to monitor progress for a team by showing work remaining for a given sprint. Work remaining is the vertical axis and time is the horizontal axis. You can define remaining work based on Stories or Tasks, and by counting the work items or summing a field.

The charts provide useful metrics to help you answer the question: Are we on track to complete this set of work by the end a sprint?

• Percentage work complete
• Number of work items not estimated, if using a field other than Remaining Work
• Average burndown
• Total scope increase

Sprint Burndown (Legacy) widget

The Sprint Burndown (Legacy) widget adds a chart based on Remaining Work defined for tasks in a team's current sprint. Select this version when you don't have access to Analytics. Configuration options include team selection, and widget size.

If your dashboard already has a legacy version available, you can easily upgrade the widget by editing the widget's configuration, and checking Try the new version now. You can always go back to the legacy version by unchecking the box.

The Sprint Burndown widget adds a chart based on Remaining Work defined for tasks in the team's current sprint. There are no configuration options for this widget.

• Access:
  • Be a member of a project with at least Basic access.
  • To add a widget to a team dashboard, be a member of the team.
• Permissions: Be a team administrator or project administrator, or have specific dashboard permissions granted to you.
• Feature enablement: Have Boards enabled. If disabled, none of the work tracking Analytics widgets display. To re-enable it, see Turn a service on or off.
• Task awareness: Be aware of the required and recommended tasks, listed later in this article.

• Access:
  • Be a member of a project with at least Basic access.
  • To add a widget to a team dashboard, be a member of the team.
• Permissions: Be a team administrator or project administrator, or have specific dashboard permissions granted to you.
• Feature enablement:
  • Have Analytics installed and enabled. Be a member of the Project Collection Administrators group to add extensions or enable the service. Organization owners are automatically added to this group.
  • Have Boards enabled. If disabled, none of the work tracking Analytics widgets display. To re-enable it, see Turn a service on or off.

To monitor sprint burndown, your team must schedule sprints and assign work to those sprints.

If you want to monitor sprint burndown based on tasks and Remaining Work, your team must carry out these extra actions.

To monitor sprint burndown, your team must schedule sprints and assign work to those sprints. For sprint burndown charts to show meaningful data, your team must carry out these extra actions.

1. From your web portal, open your team's sprint backlog.

   1. Check that you selected the right project.
   2. Select Boards>Sprints and select the correct team from the team selector menu.
   3. Select Backlog.

   

   To select another team, open the selector and select a different team or select the View Sprint directory option. Or, you can enter a keyword in the search box to filter the list of team backlogs for the project.

   

2. To select a different sprint than the one shown, open the sprint selector and select the sprint you want.

   

   The system lists only those sprints that are selected for the current team focus. If you don't see the sprints you want listed, select New Sprint from the menu, and then select Select existing iteration. For details, see Define iteration paths.

1. From your web browser, open your team's sprint backlog.

   1. Check that you selected the right project.
   2. Select Boards>Sprints and select the correct team from the team selector menu.
   3. Select Backlog.

   

   To select another team, open the selector and select a different team or select the Browse all sprints option. Or, you can enter a keyword in the search box to filter the list of team backlogs for the project.

   

2. To select a different sprint than the one shown, open the sprint selector and select the sprint you want.

   

   The system lists only those sprints that are selected for the current team focus. If you don't see the sprints you want listed, then select New Sprint from the menu, and then select Select existing iteration. For details, see Define iteration paths.

1. To open the Sprint burndown report, select Analytics.

   

2. Use the interactive controls to select from the following options:

   1. The Start Date and End Date of the sprint. These dates default to the team's current iteration sprint dates.
   2. The Backlogs/Work Items to burn down on, either the product backlog (Stories, Issues, Product Backlog Items, or Requirements) or Tasks backlog to use. Your selection impacts the options available for the Burndown on menu.
   3. The Burndown on field to use to calculate burndown, either a Count of Work Items or a sum of a field, such as Story Points, Effort, or Size.
   4. Check or uncheck Show non-working days. Nonworking days appear as gray bars in the background when enabled. Default nonworking days are set for a team and for a team's sprint through the capacity page. For more information, see Set sprint capacity.

   Select Reset to reset the controls to the default options. By default, the dates are set to the selected sprint. Changes to the start and end dates don't change any sprint date definitions.

3. If you don't track Remaining Work in tasks, you can view burndown based on a count of work items or tasks. To show a summary of the data for a specific day, hover over any point on the chart.

The selections you make are only set for you, and persist across sessions until you change them.

Add the report to a dashboard

1. To add the report to a dashboard, select the actions icon and select Copy to Dashboard.

   

2. Select the dashboard and select OK.

You can add the Sprint Burndown widget to a dashboard and select the team whose progress you want to monitor. You configure these widgets for one or more teams.

1. If you need to add the Sprint Burndown widget to your dashboard, do that now.

   You can filter the Add Widget dialog with sprint burndown to quickly locate the two widgets available to you.

   

2. To configure the widget, select the actions icon and then select Configure.

   

1. Select Edit to add the Sprint burndown widget to your team dashboard.

   The widget catalog automatically opens. Drag the Sprint Burndown widget onto the dashboard.

2. When you finish your additions, select Done Editing.

   The sprint burndown chart for the team's current sprint is added to the dashboard. There's no configuration option associated with this widget.

   

Configure the Analytics-based Sprint Burndown widget

1. To configure the widget, select the actions icon and select the Configure option.

   

2. Modify the Title of the widget and select your preferred Size. The Sprint Burndown widget can scale up to 10x10.

3. Make the following selections:

   • Team: Select the Team you want to track.
   • Backlogs and work items: Select the work items to include in your burndown. You can select to any backlog or a specific work item type.
   • Burndown on: Choose how you want to burndown. You might burndown by count of work items or a sum based on a selected field.
   • Select iteration: You can select @CurrentIteration, or a specific iteration.
   • Time period: If you selected @CurrentIteration, these dates aren't editable. They're automatically the start and end date of the current iteration. If you selected a specific iteration, you can customize the start/end date for the burndown chart.

4. Advanced features: Select the following options that you want to add to your chart.

   • Show total scope: Displays both the historical and projected scope increase.
   • Show non working days: Displays nonworking days on the burndown. When displayed, nonworking days are shaded.
   • Plot remaining using work item type color: Displays remaining work based on the work item type color, rather than the default blue color. If multiple work items are included, then it stacks colors by work item type.

Configure the Sprint Burndown (Legacy) widget

To configure the widget, select the actions icon and select the Configure option.

If your dashboard already has a legacy version available, you can easily upgrade the widget by editing the widget's configuration. Select Try the new version now. You can always go back to the legacy version by unselecting the option.