What is a Burn Up Chart in Scrum?

Burn-up charts are important visual tools that help Agile project teams manage their workload better. Surprisingly they are not as well understood or widely used as Burn-down charts.

Through this article, I hope you can understand what a Burn-up chart is and the unique advantages it offers an agile project manager. 

What is a Burn-Up Chart? 

A burn-up chart is a visual tool used in agile and Scrum projects. It is a graphical depiction of the work completed compared to the project scope. A burn-up chart provides information in a simple and easy manner on how much work was actually done in the previous sprints, and what can be forecasted in the upcoming sprints. Burn-up charts are valuable for tracking progress and estimating completion dates for projects that span multiple sprints.

What do the Three Lines in the Burn-Up Chart mean?

1. Scope / Goal
• This is a horizontal line depicting the total effort needed to complete the feature
• Usually represented as Story Points
• Any change in the level of the horizontal line indicate a change in scope
• Depicted in green in the chart above
2. Expected Velocity
• This is a diagonal line from bottom left to the top right
• This is a control line that usually splits the total effort into equal velocity increments 
• Depicted in blue in the chart above
3. Actual Velocity
• This is a diagonal line that moves from the bottom left to the top right
• This line traces the actual velocity of the team; therefore may not be a straight line
• Depicted in red in the chart above
• When the slope of the line becomes flat, it means velocity has dropped
• When the slope of the line is steep or vertical, it means velocity has increased
• If the Actual Velocity line is below the Expected Velocity line, then the project is behind schedule

What is the difference between a Burn-up Chart and a Burn-down Chart?

Parameter	Burn-up Chart	Burn-down Chart
Scope	Amount of work remaining, usually in a project Used for reporting actuals as well as forecasts	Amount of work remaining, usually, in a sprint
Visualization	Captures completed story point, forecasted story points, and the project goal May include optimistic, realistic, and pessimistic estimates Lines go from bottom left to the top right	Captures expected and actual reduction of work Lines go from top left to bottom right
Advantage	Intuitive to the non-agile audience; since up and to the right is how most people read charts Helps in better diagnostics of the sprints Help in forecasting	Simple Usually built into agile project management tools
Disadvantage	Slightly more complex than burn-down charts Not always available in agile project management tools You often need manual spreadsheet templates to create these charts	Doesn't give too much information to aid decision making

Advantages of Burn-up Charts

1. Gain a better view of the project goal
2. They usually give you a multi-sprint view
3. Helps in forecasting project or feature delivery
4. Makes it easy to identify scope creep 
5. More intuitive since lines go from bottom left to the top right
6. More information can be layered based on the team style (like optimistic and pessimistic estimates)

Burn-up Chart Template

As mentioned above, Burn Up Charts are not always available within agile project management software. Here is a basic Burn-up Chart Template to get you started.