Hey Scrum Masters, check out the new JIRA Burnup Chart

The newer beta JIRA Burnup Chart has been an instant hit with Scrum Masters looking to give a visual representation of a sprint's scope in JIRA along with remaining work. This is a fairly new reporting option, in beta version, for the Atlassian JIRA reports arsenal. It became available through Atlassian Labs about the same time as the release of JIRA 7.1. For those using the SaaS cloud version of JIRA Software, the chart can be activated through administrator via Atlassian Labs. The concept of a Burnup Chart has been around for quite awhile in Agile, but had not been implemented in terms of a turn-key real time chart for JIRA Software administrators. 

 

Before we go any further it is important to know the difference between the Burnup Chart versus the much more popular Burndown Chart. Simply stated, the Burndown Chart illustrates how much work remains to be completed in the project. A Burnup Chart illustrates how much work has been completed in regards to the total amount of work for the project. The nice thing about how the beta Burnup Chart works in JIRA is the ability to chart by individual sprints in your project. This means, you can see day-by-day the amount of work completed versus the total amount of work remaining. More importantly, you can show your audience if more work has been added or taken away from from an active sprint. 

 

When using the Burnup Chart in JIRA, you will find the option to chart by the following parameters: 

1. Story Points

2. Original Time Estimate

3. Account

4. Business Value

5. Issue Count

When first going into the Burnup Chart in JIRA, it defaults to the story points view for a particular sprint in a project. Although a typical burnup chart in Agile usually consists of just two lines, at this time, the beta Burnup Chart in JIRA has four lines. 

 

 

Once you have selected a particular sprint and chart parameter, the line chart displays the four lines representing:

1. Work Scope

2. Scope Projection

3. Completed Work

4. Guideline

As you begin to work with the Burnup Chart, you come to realize the advantage of a burn up chart over a burn down chart is in the line representing scope. In other words this gives a visual representation of any scope creep to a sprint. I have found this to be extremely valuable in communicating delivery risks to stakeholders if more story points are to be added to a sprint already in mid-flight. The “Guideline” in the JIRA Burnup Chart, or sometimes called “Trend Line” in Agile, gives a visual of what the more down-to-earth completion date will be for a sprint, or the entire project itself. 

 

As with any report or chart, the goal is about communicating data into a simplified format that everyone can interpret. With JIRA's beta release of the Burnup Chart, Scrum Masters will find a tool to show work completion along with scope status. The new chart can be particularly handy for situation where clients are wanting to add more work mid-sprint or project, and you need to show them the impact on delivery dates. This gives stakeholders time to reflect and re-evaluate whether it is worth the risk of missing a delivery by adding additional tasks to the project.