Few challenges are more universal than the nagging uncertainty about a project’s progress. Teams often feel like they are flying blind, unsure if they are on track, falling behind, or heading for a last-minute scramble to meet a deadline. This ambiguity can lead to missed deadlines, stakeholder frustration, and team burnout. The critical question that every project manager, Scrum Master, and team member needs to answer is simple: "Are we going to finish on time?"
Fortunately, there is a simple, powerful, and visual tool designed to answer precisely that question: the burndown chart. A burndown chart transforms the potential chaos of a project into a straightforward, predictable narrative of progress, showing where the team stands and where they are heading. It is an indispensable instrument for monitoring progress, making timely adjustments, and delivering results on schedule.
This comprehensive guide will dissect the anatomy of a burndown chart, teach you how to read its various narratives, and explore the different types used for both tactical and strategic planning. We will also walk through the process of creating a chart, examine its limitations and pitfalls, and ultimately discover how to elevate project tracking from a manual chore to a source of automated intelligence with an integrated work management solution.
In this post, you’ll learn:
What is a burndown chart?
A burndown chart is a simple tool that tracks a team’s work progress against the amount of time remaining to complete the work. The diagram illustrates the ideal rate of effort required to achieve work completion by a specified date. Using a burndown chart helps you:
- Acts as an Early Warning System: The chart serves as a powerful diagnostic tool, helping teams identify potential schedule setbacks well in advance. By comparing planned progress to actual progress, teams can spot deviations, investigate the root causes of delays, and implement corrective measures to get back on track.
- Enhances Communication and Alignment: By offering a clear, visual status report, the burndown chart serves as a single source of truth for the entire team and its stakeholders. It keeps everyone on the same page regarding progress and expectations, fostering alignment and reducing misunderstandings.
- Monitors Scope Creep: A well-maintained burndown chart can make scope creep—the addition of new work after a project has started—highly visible. A sudden upward movement in the line indicates that the total workload has increased, signaling a need for discussion and reprioritization. A burndown chart is a way to manage projects and teams more efficiently.
Using burndown charts in Agile and Scrum project management.
While burndown charts are helpful in any project management methodology, they are a cornerstone of Agile frameworks, particularly Scrum. In the Agile world, work is often performed in short, time-boxed iterations called Sprints, which typically last from one to four weeks. The burndown chart is the primary tool used by the development team to monitor its daily progress toward the Sprint Goal.
The true power of the burndown chart in an Agile context lies not in its function as a management report card, but as an empirical tool for the team itself. Agile and Scrum are built on the foundation of empiricism—making decisions based on what is known and observed through experience. The burndown chart provides this essential, observable data every single day. It presents a transparent comparison: "Here is the work we planned to do, and here is the work that is remaining".
This daily feedback loop transforms the chart from a passive reporting tool into an active catalyst for the problem-solving that defines high-performing Agile teams. An "ugly" chart that shows the team is behind schedule is not a sign of failure; it is a critical data point that highlights the need for action. It triggers the essential Agile practice of "inspect and adapt." The team inspects the data ("Why are we behind?") and adapts its plan ("What can we do today to remove this blocker and get back on track?"). This daily conversation, sparked by the burndown chart, is the engine of continuous improvement, making the chart a tool for the team, by the team.
Burndown chart breakdown.
To read the story of a project's progress, one must first understand the language of the chart. Every burndown chart, from the simplest to the most complex, is built from a few fundamental components that work together to create a compelling narrative.
The horizontal axis (x-axis).
The horizontal axis, or X-axis, represents the project or sprint timeline. It is the steady, unchangeable march of time against which all work is measured. The timeline typically starts on the left with Day 1 of the project and proceeds to the final day on the right. The unit of measurement can vary depending on the chart's scope:
For a Sprint burndown chart, the X-axis is almost always measured in days.
For a longer-term release or product burndown chart, the X-axis is often measured in sprints or weeks.
The vertical axis (y-axis).
The vertical axis, or Y-axis, represents the total amount of work remaining to be completed. At the beginning of the project, this "mountain of work" is at its highest point. The goal is to burn it down to zero by the end of the timeline. To be effective, this work must be quantified using a consistent unit of effort. The most common units are:
- Story Points: This is an abstract unit of measure used by Agile teams to estimate the relative effort required to complete a piece of work. Story points are often preferred over hours because they account for complexity, risk, and uncertainty, not just time spent.
- Hours: A more traditional measure, this represents the estimated number of hours required to complete the remaining tasks.
- Task Count: The simplest measure, this is a raw count of the number of individual tasks, user stories, or other work items remaining.
The ideal effort line.
The ideal effort line, often referred to as the guideline, is a straight, diagonal line that connects the total estimated work on the first day to zero work on the final day. It represents a perfect, linear rate of progress—the average pace the team would need to maintain each day to finish exactly on time.
While real-world progress is rarely so perfectly linear, this line is not meant to be a rigid expectation. Instead, it serves as a crucial benchmark. It serves as the reference point against which the team's actual progress is measured, providing an immediate visual indication of whether the project is generally on track.
The actual effort line.
This is the most critical line on the chart, as it tells the true story of the project. The actual effort line plots the exact amount of work remaining at the end of each day or period. It begins at the same starting point as the ideal line. Still, its path will fluctuate based on the team's actual performance in the real world, including bursts of productivity, unexpected blockers, and mid-project discoveries. The relationship between this line and the ideal line is what provides the rich narrative of the project's journey.
How to read a burndown chart.
Think of a burndown chart as a visual representation of project status. Anyone who reads the chart can see if the work is being completed on time or if the team is falling behind the previously set goals.
A basic burndown chart is a line graph with two plotted lines. The x-axis represents the number of days required to complete the work, while the y-axis indicates the number of tasks to be completed.
On-schedule burndown chart.
- Chart Description: The actual work line (orange) closely follows or "hugs" the ideal work line (blue). It may fluctuate slightly above or below, but it generally tracks the planned trajectory.
- Interpretation: This represents a healthy, predictable project. The team is progressing at the expected rate, their initial estimates are proving to be accurate, and no major impediments are slowing them down. The project is on track to meet its deadline.
- Recommended Action: The team should continue with its current strategy while remaining vigilant for any new issues that may arise.
Behind schedule burndown chart.
- Chart Description: The actual work line is consistently below the ideal work line.
- Interpretation: The team is burning through work faster than planned. This positive development could be attributed to several factors: the tasks were less complex than initially estimated, the team is working with exceptional efficiency, or a key member discovered an innovative solution that accelerated progress.
- Recommended Action: This presents an opportunity. A discussion should be held to determine if the team can take on additional high-priority work from the backlog. This scenario also provides valuable data for improving the accuracy of future estimations.
Ahead of schedule burndown chart.
- Chart Description: The actual work line is consistently above the ideal work line.
- Interpretation: The team is falling behind the planned schedule. More work remains to be done than anticipated now, which is a clear warning sign that the project is at risk of missing its deadline.
- Recommended Action: This situation requires immediate attention and open discussion. The team must investigate the root cause of the delay. Are tasks proving more complex than initially thought? Are there external dependencies causing a bottleneck? Is a team member struggling with a blocker? Identifying the cause is the first step toward corrective action.
How to create a burndown chart.
A burndown chart can be as straightforward or as complex as you like. A basic chart plots work tasks, completion time, and work progress. Adding extra information to the chart is optional.
5 steps to create a burndown chart.
It takes only five steps to create and use an Agile burndown chart for a sprint:
- Determine your total number of tasks (perhaps by breaking stories down into smaller steps)
- Assign a time frame to each task
- Determine total sprint length
- Use software to create the chart
- Update the chart as work progresses
Creating a burndown chart with Microsoft Excel.
Creating a simple burndown chart in Microsoft Excel is easy. Begin by naming and filling in three columns with the following information:
- Time—number of days in the sprint or actual calendar dates
- Planned task completion—number of story points or tasks to complete
- Actual task completion—number of remaining tasks to complete
The total number of tasks will vary with each sprint, as will the number of tasks the team plans to complete each day of the sprint.
Here’s an example of how the columns in Excel might look for a seven-day sprint that includes 10 tasks. To turn it into a line graph, select all the cells, then click Insert > Chart > Line.
This example illustrates the first day of the sprint. At the end of each day, you’ll update the Actual Task Completion column with the number of tasks that are remaining, which will reveal the trajectory of the orange line.
For example, on day two, one task was completed, leaving nine tasks remaining to be completed. You’ll enter “9” into the actual task completion column for day two. At the end of the sprint, your chart may look like the chart below:
As you can see, the Actual Task Completion sometimes met the Planned Task Completion goal, and at other times, it did not. Various work and life factors, such as task complexity or an unforeseen challenge, may interfere with your work progress.
Create burndown charts with Workfront.
Workfront is a tool that allows you to create burndown charts. You can create tables and graphs, track trends, and manage sprints from a single, automated system that’s integrated with all the other details of your work projects. As valuable as a sprint burndown chart is in helping you easily track workflows and sprint progress in real time, it’s just one of the many helpful features you’ll find within a comprehensive Agile project management solution like Workfront.
Watch the overview video to learn more about how Workfront can transform your project management capabilities.
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