Configure and monitor sprint burndown
Azure DevOps Server 2019
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.
Important
- Deleting Area Paths or reconfiguring Iteration Paths causes irreversible data loss. For example:
- Burndown and burnup widget charts
- Sprint burndown charts
- Velocity charts for teams with changed Area Paths
- Historical trend charts that reference the Area Path and Iteration Path as they were defined at the time for each work item.
- Once deleted, you can't retrieve historical data for these paths.
- You can only delete area and iteration paths that are no longer used by any work items.
For an overview of all burndown and burnup charts available to you, see Burndown and burnup guidance.
Note
Sprint burndown reports are derived from data tracked by a team during a sprint or iteration. For more information, see About teams and Agile tools.
The in-context Burndown Trend report
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.
A healthy sprint burndown chart appears similar to the following example. The Ideal Trend line connects the two points:
- (1) Team's total capacity at the start of the sprint.
- (2) 0 Remaining Work at the end of the sprint.
The slope represents the rate at which the team needs to burn down work to finish the sprint on time.
The actual graph, the blue area, represents the total amount of planned sprint work and how it changes throughout the course of the sprint. The blue area corresponds to the sum of all Remaining Work set for all sprint tasks, and possibly bugs, that have the current sprint as their iteration path.
The Sprint Burndown widget
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.
Prerequisites
| Category | Requirements |
|---|---|
| Access levels | - Project member. - At least Basic access. |
| Permissions | - Team administrator or project administrator or specific dashboard permissions granted to you. - To add a widget to a team dashboard: Member of the team. |
| Feature enablement | - Azure Boards enabled. If disabled, none of the work tracking Analytics widgets display. To re-enable it, see Turn a service on or off. - Analytics installed and enabled. Project Collection Administrators group members can add extensions or enable the service. Organization owners are automatically members of this group. |
Team activities to track tasks and Remaining Work
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.
Required activities
- Define and estimate tasks for each product backlog item that you're working on in the sprint. If you work from your team's backlog and taskboard, the items you create are automatically assigned to the current sprint (Iteration) and to your team's default Area Path. For more information, see Add tasks to backlog items to support sprint planning.
- Update Remaining Work for each sprint task as work progresses. For more information, see Update tasks during the sprint cycle.
Recommended activities
- To decrease the effect of poor estimates, define tasks that take a day or less to complete.
- Don't divide tasks into subtasks. If you divide a task into subtasks, specify hours only for the subtasks. These hours are rolled up as summary values for the parent task.
- To support monitoring and achieve a smoother burndown chart, update Remaining Work daily or several times within a week.
- At the end of the sprint, update the task status of completed tasks and determine how to handle incomplete tasks.
Empty sprint burndown chart
If your sprint burndown chart appears empty, check these points:
- Did you assign tasks to the sprint associated with the chart?
- Did you assign Remaining Work to the tasks assigned to the sprint?
- Are the parent work items of the tasks assigned to the same sprint? If not, the tasks might appear in another sprint associated with the parent item.
Open a Sprint backlog
You view the in-context sprint burndown report from a team's Sprint backlog.
From your web browser, open your team's sprint backlog.
- Check that you selected the right project.
- Select Boards>Sprints and select the correct team from the team selector menu.
- 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.
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.
View the in-context Burndown Trend report
Add the Sprint Burndown widget to a dashboard
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.
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.
Current and past sprint burndown charts
As you complete each sprint, the system maintains a history of your activity.
To view a past sprint and its burndown chart, select the sprint from the Sprint selector.
You can review sprint burndown in-context reports to show the team patterns in execution. The burndown charts maintain a record of the team's ability to plan and estimate.
| Sprint 1 | Sprint 2 | Sprint 3 |
|---|---|---|
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Teams can find it useful to review these reports periodically during their sprint retrospectives. It can spark useful discussions and lead to setting one or more sprint goals, such as:
- How does your projected velocity match up to your actual velocity?
- How can you more accurately determine how much your team can accomplish in a sprint?
- How can you complete work at a more regular pace throughout the sprint?