Product or Release Burnup
Short Tip: It is the chart that monitors how much work has been done in terms of product or release.
What is it?
It is a chart that indicates the work already finished in the product or release. In Burnup, the X-axis corresponds to the Sprints and the Y-axis to the work metric (usually the number of story points). Each Sprint, the Product Owner updates the chart based on the increment delivered in the Sprint (the “Done” column in the Sprint Backlog) and the Backlog’s total volume.
With complex products, Burnup is commonly used not only for the product, but also for the releases.
Why use it?
Product or Release Burnup is a way of viewing product development progress that is very common in agile methods. It allows the whole Scrum team and stakeholders to quickly view the progress of product building.
How to use it?
- Initially, agree with the Scrum Master about who will update the Burnup chart and what metric will be used (e.g., story points). This update is generally performed by the Product Owner or, ideally, automatically fed by a system.
- Once that is defined, at the end of the Sprint, update the chart by establishing two marks on the Y-axis in different colors:
- In blue, mark the total volume of the Product Backlog in the previous Sprint, added to or subtracted from the volume of changes occurred in the current Sprint;
- In red, mark the total volume developed by the team up to the previous Sprint, added to or subtracted from the volume developed in the current Sprint;
- Draw two lines connecting the points for the previous Sprint (or zero, if it is the first Sprint) to the current Sprint.
- At the end of each Sprint, update the chart according to the previous step.
At the end, there will be two lines:
- A blue line, which will correspond to the total volume of Backlog to be developed. The change in this line will indicate whether the Backlog itself has increased or decreased in volume (e.g., by adding new stories, new estimates, etc.).
- A red line, which will correspond to the total volume already developed. The change in this line will indicate how much the Developers have managed to turn stories into product increments.
The distance between the blue and red lines indicates what remains to be developed. Ideally, when the lines touch, the development would be finished (there would be no more items in the Backlog).
Because in practice the Backlog can be difficult to estimate, especially for complex products, many organizations prefer to work with a shorter-term vision related to the next release. Thus, instead of using the Backlog’s total volume for the blue line, only items corresponding to the next release are used. In this case, when the blue and red lines touch, it means that the product is, from a technical point of view, ready to become available to users.