Want to learn about burn up charts and understand how to use them?
A burn up chart is one of the simplest tools to quickly track your project’s progress and evaluate what you’ve accomplished.
In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about burn up charts to help you use them effectively.
Let’s get started.
What is a burn up chart?
A burnup chart is a visual representation of your project’s progress that highlights:
- The work completed
- and the total project work.
It’s an easy way for Agile project managers to track what’s been completed against their total scope of work . This makes it easy to estimate if things are going according to plan or not.
How do you read a burn up chart?
Here’s an example of a good burn up chart:
Let’s break it down. A burn up chart shows:
- The quantity of work (your story points) represented on the vertical axis (y axis)
- Your total total project time (sprints) represented on the horizontal axis (x axis)
In addition to the two axes, there are two lines present in the burn up chart:
- The green line is the completed work line and it represents the work your team has completed so far
- The grey line is the total work line and represents the total work you have to do (your project’s scope)
Here’s a closer look at both those lines:
A. Completed Work Line
This line highlights the work your team has completed so far. Use it to identify how far off you are from completing a project. Remember, a project is complete when your work completed line meets your total work line.
You can also use it to chart how much work your team completed during each sprint (iteration). This is an easy way to identify when your team was most productive.
Your completed work line is also a good way to motivate your team by showing them how much they’ve already accomplished. It’s a simple way to show them how much effort they need to put in to complete an iteration!
B. Total Work Line
This line on the burn up chart represents your project’s entire scope of work (your total project backlog).
As clients may add backlog items midway through your progress, this line could increase due to scope creep . For example, in the burn up chart we highlighted earlier, the total work line moved up during the fifth iteration. This was likely due to the client adding some backlog items at that stage.
However, in rarer cases, your total work line may even go down if a client reduces the backlog items in your product or sprint backlog.
(Don’t count on this happening though!)
How do burn up and burn down charts differ?
While burnup and burndown charts are both key to Agile project management process , they’re not the same thing.
- A burnup chart highlights the work you’ve completed against your total project scope .
How?
A scrum master can go over their burnups to see what went wrong and work on solutions with the scrum team during their daily meetings!
B. Monitors Your Project Scope
Unlike other charts, burnup charts also monitor your project scope. This gives you context when you’re monitoring your project progress.
For example, if a project is taking longer than expected, take a look at the scope line to see if there was a scope change. This would explain why you’re behind schedule – even if nothing appeared to be going wrong.
Understanding your scope of work can be incredibly helpful when justifying delays to customers and other stakeholders. If a client is concerned about how long a project is taking, a product owner can highlight the deviation from the planned project path – which would explain the scope creep.
What is the Best Burnup Chart Tool for Agile Project Management?
ClickUp is the best burn up chart tool for Agile project management – create powerful burnup charts to help you keep up with your project’s progress.
Luckily, Agile methodology is exactly what the ClickUp project management tool was built for! Here’s a quick glance at some of ClickUp’s key project management features:
1. Burn up charts
As we’ve mentioned, ClickUp can help you create a burn up chart to track your project.
Unlike some other burnup charts, ClickUp’s charts are super easy to read and understand! This makes it perfect for clients and customers.
ClickUp’s burn up chart is a Sprint widget in ClickUp’s Dashboard .
In ClickUp’s burn up chart, the total amount of work to do (scope lines) is grey and the vertical axis represents Sprint points (or story points).
The green line represents the work completed over time (shown on the horizontal axis).
Once you reach all work completed, the green line will intersect the grey line, signaling the projects completion.
Add additional tasks to your project or Sprint, and you will see an increase in the grey line representing total amount of work to be done.
How do you create a burn up chart in ClickUp?
- First, create or view a Dashboard
- Click on + Add a widget
- Select Sprint Widgets or search for the Burn up chart.
- Give your Burn up chart a name (this is optional, and you can rename it later!)
- Select the data and options for your Burn up chart
- Click Add Widget 🎉
However, burnup charts aren’t all that ClickUp gives you.
In ClickUp’s Dashboard , you can view other data for your projects all in one place.
Widgets are the building blocks of each Dashboard and will help you get insights on:
- Sprints
- Docs
- Tables
- Conversations
- And more!
You can even customize:
- The data source of each widget: such as data from sprint lists or custom fields
- The time period: such as a rolling 30 day period or a fixed range
- The workload type: such as sprint capacity based on a story points
Conclusion
Burn up charts are one of the most helpful ways to keep track of your Agile project’s progress. And since you can’t manage Agile software development without the right project management tool, why not download ClickUp today? It has everything you need to manage your burnups, burndowns and sprints to keep your project progressing smoothly.