From the course: Data-Driven Project Management: Project Metrics That Matter

Schedule metrics for agile management: Velocity and burn charts

From the course: Data-Driven Project Management: Project Metrics That Matter

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Schedule metrics for agile management: Velocity and burn charts

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- One of the most common questions we get asked in project management is when will it be done. To answer this accurately, we need to delve into schedule metrics. There are many schedule metrics out there. So for this lesson, we'll just focus on creating a burn-up chart to measure velocity. This type of metric is often used in projects that use agile methods. We're going to make the following assumptions for this lesson. The team is using two-week sprints. They're using story points to estimate work. We're recording progress at the end of sprint eight. The estimated amount of work they expect to finish in each sprint is nine story points. Now we can use this information to create a burn-up chart. A burn-up chart shows the total work, the target velocity, and the work that has been accepted. To create a burn-up chart in Excel, follow these steps. Create a column that indicates time. Now in this example, we're using sprints, but you can use days, weeks, months, or whatever works for your project. Then create a column with the total story points. If you aren't using story points, you can enter in effort hours or days or some other number to indicate the total amount of work. In this example, there are 125 total story points. Next, we enter the target work per time period. For our example, we expect to accomplish nine story points per sprint. This is the target velocity, in other words, the rate of work the team expects to achieve. The target work accepted is calculated by adding the target work from the previous time period to the target work from the current period. And this shows us our target velocity over time. Now we'll enter in the accepted work and accepted work means the deliverables the customer signed off on. So here, the team finished seven points in sprint one, nine in sprint two, 10 in sprint three, and so on. Since we're measuring at the end of sprint eight, we don't have data for sprints nine through 14. The final column is for total work accepted. Just add the accepted work from the previous sprint to the accepted work from the current sprint. And now you'll have all the data you need to create a burn-up chart. So select the data and insert a line chart. And you can see in this chart that the work accepted is below the target work accepted. And this indicates that the team is behind schedule. Now, what if your customer wants to add scope? You just add those additional story points to those in the total story points column and the top line of the chart will show the total number of story points goes up. Burn-up charts provide a quick answer to the when will it be done question by looking at the current rate of work compared to the target and forecasting the completion date, given the velocity and the remaining work.

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