Agile burndown chart: A project management tutorial

Key takeaways

• Burndown charts show work remaining over time so Agile teams can spot risk early and adjust before a sprint ends. Jira is a common source of truth for this view.

• They track remaining effort such as story points, hours, or other estimates, and not individual performance, quality, or explicit scope change.

• The most common types are sprint, epic, and release or version burndowns, each useful at different planning horizons.

• Use burndown charts as an early warning signal: plateaus indicate blockers, late drops suggest batch updates or end-loaded work, and upward jumps often mean scope was added. Consider using burnup charts when scope changes frequently.

Burndown charts help Agile teams see whether they’re on track to finish the work they committed to—before the sprint ends. 

In a single view, you can spot trends (steady progress, stalls, late rushes) and decide what to do next.

This guide explains what a burndown chart is, what it tracks, common types, how to create one, and how to interpret key patterns—using Jira as the main example.

What is a burndown chart?

A burndown chart is a graph that shows how much work remains over time, most commonly across a sprint. This allows teams to gauge progress toward a goal and visualize the project timeline. 

Atlassian’s Jira tutorial describes it as showing work completed (in a sprint or epic) and the total work remaining, used to predict the likelihood of finishing within the available time.

A burndown chart typically includes an ideal effort line—a straight, planned trajectory from the total workload to completion. It serves as a benchmark for comparing actual progress. 

The amount of work remaining appears on the vertical axis, while elapsed time appears on the horizontal axis.

Axes relationship (quick)

In Jira, the vertical axis reflects your selected estimation statistic (for example, story points or hours). This includes:

• X-axis: time (often days in a sprint)

• Y-axis: remaining effort (based on the team’s estimation unit)

What are the common uses in sprints?

Burndown charts are most often used to track progress within a single Scrum sprint so teams can monitor the iteration and adjust quickly if the sprint goal is at risk.

Sprint burndown charts are used for daily tracking within a single iteration lasting 1–4 weeks, helping teams measure velocity and manage work within that specific time-boxed period.

Burndown charts are particularly useful in short-term sprints with fixed project scope, where requirements are unlikely to change.

What do burndown charts track?

Burndown charts track remaining effort, or how much work the team believes is still left to complete. They allow teams to compare real progress to planned progress.

This makes it easier to visualize how much work has actually been completed versus what was expected.

Also, burndown charts help assess the team's likelihood of completing work within the set timeframe. Common units include:

• Story points

• Hours/time estimates

• A team-defined estimation statistic (Jira supports story points, hours, or a custom unit).

Story point estimates are commonly used to quantify how much effort is required for each task, helping teams visualize and track progress on a burndown chart.

What burndown charts do not show

A burndown chart doesn’t tell the whole story. On its own, it typically does not show:

• Individual performance

• Work quality or value delivered

• Clear, explicit scope changes over time (that’s where burnup charts help—more on this below)

3 types of burndown charts

Burndown charts come in a few common variants. 

Project burndown charts monitor progress at the overall project level by tracking work completed versus work remaining across the project life cycle. Atlassian also highlights sprint burndown plus “epic and release (version) burndown” as key Agile metrics.

Product burndown charts provide a visual overview of remaining work across the entire product backlog or large epics. They offer long-term and strategic insights into project progress. 

These types of charts are especially useful for coordinating planning and resources across multiple teams working on different parts of a project. 

However, there are three main types of burndown charts you will see, including:

1. Sprint burndown chart

Use a sprint burndown chart for short-term sprint focus (one iteration) and tracking sprint progress. It works best when the team is working from a sprint backlog and wants day-to-day visibility.

The actual work remaining line fluctuates as tasks are completed, providing a realistic depiction of the team's performance. This line often moves above and below the ideal work remaining line, highlighting changes in progress and schedule adherence.

Tip: Update daily for accuracy—burndown charts are most useful when the data reflects what’s actually left at the end of each day.

To view the sprint burndown chart:

• Navigate to your scrum space.

• Select the Backlog or Active sprint.

• Click Reports, then select Burndown Chart.

Here’s a breakdown of the important aspects within a Jira sprint burndown chart:

1. Estimation statistic: The vertical axis represents the estimation statistic that you've selected.

2. Remaining values: The red line represents the total amount of work left in the sprint, according to your team's estimates.

3. Guideline: The grey line estimates where your team should be with steady progress. If the red line is below it, your team is on track to finish the sprint, though this is just one indicator to monitor progress.

2. Epic burndown chart

Use an epic burndown chart to track progress against a single epic across multiple sprints. Atlassian notes this view helps teams see how quickly they’re working through an epic and how work added/removed impacts overall progress. 

Epic burndown charts also help teams estimate how many sprints are needed to complete an epic by analyzing current sprint velocity and scope changes.

You can view the epic burndown chart in Jira by:

• Navigate to your scrum space.

• Select the Backlog or Active sprint.

• Click Reports, then select Epic Burndown.

• Select an epic from the dropdown next to the Epic Burndown header. Then choose from epics in spaces configured for your board with the board's filter.

To fully understand each section of the epic burndown chart, here’s a quick breakdown:

1. Epic menu: Select which epic to view data for.

2. Work added: The dark blue segment shows the amount of work added to the epic in each sprint. In this example, work is measured in story points.

3. Work remaining: The light blue segment shows the amount of work remaining in the epic.

4. Work completed: The green segment represents how much work is completed for the epic in each sprint.

5. Projected completion: The report projects how many sprints it will take to complete the epic, based on the team's velocity.

3. Release or product burndown chart

Use a release burndown chart to track delivery across multiple sprints toward a release/version. This is helpful for release forecasting and longer-horizon stakeholder reporting.

A release burndown chart tracks progress across multiple sprints or milestones, making it valuable for Agile project management and strategic planning within agile teams. 

Atlassian frames release (version) burndown as tracking progress over a larger body of work than a single sprint.

What are the components of a burndown chart?

A burndown chart consists of a few core elements. Once you understand these, it’s much easier to read the signals the chart is giving you.

• Axes (time + remaining effort): Time runs along the x-axis (usually each day of the sprint). Remaining effort runs along the y-axis using your team’s estimate unit (story points, hours, etc.). In Jira, this reflects your configured estimation statistic

• Ideal work remaining line: A straight guideline from the sprint’s total estimated effort on Day 1 to zero on the final day. You can calculate the ideal daily burn rate as total estimated effort ÷ number of working days.

• Actual work remaining line (actual effort): The real “remaining effort” at the end of each day based on updated work status and estimates. This line moves up or down as work is completed—or as scope changes.

• How to interpret ideal vs. actual:

  • If the actual line stays close to ideal, the sprint is trending well.

  • If the actual line sits above ideal, the sprint may be at risk (or scope increased).

  • If the line jumps up, something changed—often work was added.

Note: If scope changes are frequent and you need clearer visibility, burnup charts show total scope separately from completed work.

How to create a burndown chart

Create burndown charts manually using project management tools or rely on platforms like Jira to automate updates and reduce effort. Daily updates are essential to accurately reflect team progress and identify issues early.

Start building your own burndown chart following these steps:

Step 1: Define work and estimate effort

In Jira, your team sets an estimation statistic (story points, hours, or a custom unit) so the burndown reflects your estimates consistently. Tracking daily updates helps teams understand their velocity and improve future sprint planning.

Make sure you define work and effort by:

• Listing the backlog items included (for a sprint: the sprint backlog).

• Estimating each item using your chosen unit (story points, hours, etc.). These estimates are used to track progress and compare completed work with planned work.

Step 2: Set axes and draw ideal line

Burndown charts require set axes and ideal lines to actually show progress. To set these up, simply:

• Put the sprint timeline on the x-axis

• Put total estimated effort on the y-axis

• Draw the ideal line from total effort down to zero by the sprint end date

Step 3: Plot daily progress

In Jira, you typically view this as a report rather than plotting it by hand. Atlassian’s tutorial steps for viewing the sprint burndown are: go to your Scrum space, choose Backlog/Active sprint, then Reports, and Burndown Chart. Ensure you: 

• Record remaining work at the end of each day to track daily progress

• Update the actual line daily and use a burndown chart to visualize progress

Step 4: Review, adjust, and retrospect

Support documentation and notes that track remaining work throughout the iterative process helps teams respond to trends accordingly. During the sprint (and especially in retro), make sure you:

• Compare actual progress to the ideal trend

• Discuss what caused deviations

• Adjust future estimation and planning habits

How to read actual progress

A burndown is easiest to read when you treat it like a daily early-warning system for monitoring real progress and the team's actual progress—not a scorecard.

Healthy burndown pattern

A healthy pattern often looks like a steady descent toward zero. If the team consistently finishes early, they may not be committing to enough work during planning. 

However, if teams consistently miss their targets, they may be taking on too much work. Atlassian notes that both hitting and missing targets are valuable signals revealed by burndown trends.

Flat line or plateau

A plateau usually means work is blocked or not moving to “done.”

• Use standup to identify the blocker

• Swarm on the constraint

• Split work smaller if “done” is too chunky

Steep drop

A sudden drop can mean:

• work was completed in a batch and updated late, or

• work was rushed at the end

Response:

• confirm acceptance criteria were met

• verify quality (tests, review, “definition of done”)

Actual line above or below ideal line

The position of the actual line relative to the ideal line shows whether your team is ahead of schedule or falling behind. They’re broken down into these two categories:

• Above ideal: behind schedule (or scope increased)

• Below ideal: ahead of schedule (or work was overestimated)

Burndown charts vs. burnup charts

Burndown answers how much work is left, while burnup charts tell you how much you’ve completed and how much total scope exists. 

A burnup chart uses a separate line to distinguish the total scope from work completed, making scope changes easier to visualize over time.

• Burndown emphasizes remaining work trending to zero.

• Burnup charts make scope changes visible by showing total scope alongside completed work.

When to use burnup charts

Use burnup when scope changes are common and you want stakeholders to see the difference between “we’re behind” and “we added work.”

Many teams pair both: burndown for sprint execution signals, burnup for scope transparency.

Use burndown charts in project management and Agile

Burndown charts work best when they’re part of the rhythm of delivery, especially in a scrum project. How the team works together is crucial for interpreting burndown charts and successfully managing agile projects. Use them across:

• Sprint planning: confirm the commitment is realistic

• Daily standups: reference the chart to surface risk early (not to micromanage)

• Sprint review or stakeholder reporting: explain progress, trade-offs, and changes

• Retrospective: learn from patterns (late drops, long plateaus, frequent scope adds)

Common mistakes to avoid

There are plenty of mistakes to avoid with burndown charts, but the most common include:

• Not updating daily: stale charts hide risk until it’s too late.

• Using task counts instead of effort units: raw counts can distort reality, while effort-based units are more meaningful for forecasting.

• Ignoring scope changes: if work gets added mid-sprint, burndown can look “worse” even if execution is fine. Track scope changes separately or use burnup for visibility.

• Using burndown as an individual performance metric: it’s a team-level planning and delivery signal, not a people evaluation tool.

Tools, templates, and automations to help create burndown charts

Jira burndown capabilities

Jira provides sprint burndown reporting and makes the y-axis reflect your chosen estimation statistic. Atlassian’s tutorial explains where to find the burndown report and what its lines represent.

Excel/Sheets templates (manual option)

If you need to build a burndown manually:

• create a table with Day 1 to Day N

• include a “remaining effort” column

• chart it as a line chart

• add an “ideal remaining” column for the guideline

Pair with Confluence and Loom for clarity

• Confluence: document estimation approach, definition of done, and sprint goal so teams interpret the chart consistently.

• Loom: record quick async walkthroughs (“Here’s why we’re above ideal, and what we’re doing about it”) to reduce meeting load and prevent misinterpretation.

Burndown Chart Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a burn up chart and a burndown chart?

A burndown chart tracks the amount of work remaining over time, while a burn up chart shows work completed versus total work. Both visualize progress, but burn up charts make scope changes more visible.

What are the four types of burndown charts?

The four types of burndown charts are sprint burndown, epic burndown, release burndown, and version burndown. Each tracks progress at different levels of work in Jira.

What is the purpose of a burndown chart?

A burndown chart helps teams monitor progress, predict whether goals will be met, and quickly identify issues such as scope creep or inaccurate estimates. It keeps teams focused and informed throughout a sprint or project.

What is the alternative to a burndown chart?

Alternatives to burndown charts include burn up charts, cumulative flow diagrams, and velocity charts. These tools also help teams visualize progress and manage workflow.