Reveal: Visualize Jira Sprint Burnup and Burndown Progress
Most Jira dashboards look the same. Charts. Lines. Numbers. Burnup, burndown, velocity…
They are useful, but often feel too technical and a bit dry. You need to stop and think to understand them - especially if you’re not deeply familiar with Agile.
Stakeholders often don’t read them at all. And even teams can lose the feeling of progress when everything is reduced to abstract numbers.
Over time, these charts become something you check - but don’t really feel.
So what if progress didn’t look like a chart at all?
From charts to images
The idea behind Reveal is simple.
Instead of showing progress as lines on a graph, it shows an image that gradually appears.
When all the work is done - the full image is visible. No explanation needed. Anyone can understand it at a glance.
Why this feels different
This approach changes how people experience progress.
It’s visual - you see the result, not just numbers
It’s intuitive - no need to interpret charts
It’s engaging - people are curious to see the full picture
Each completed task becomes a small win. Another piece appears. The team feels movement.
It’s a bit like building something together, not just tracking work.
How it works in Jira
Reveal is a dashboard gadget for Jira, and it’s quite flexible in how you set it up.
First, you choose the image that will represent your progress. There are a few options:
pick one of the built-in images;
use an image from Unsplash;
or even take an image from Jira attachments by linking to an issue.
You can also adjust the image ratio, so it fits nicely into your dashboard layout.
Then comes the interesting part - how the image is revealed.
As tasks move to Done, parts of the image appear automatically. You can choose how this looks:
Grid mode - the image is split into blocks that appear either randomly or in order. You can control fragment size and even add borders.
Fade mode - the image is revealed smoothly, from a direction (up, down, left, right) or with a blur effect.
You can also customize the overlay colors, so the visualization matches your dashboard style.
Finally, you decide what exactly you want to track.
Reveal works with different Jira entities:
sprints
epics
releases or versions
components
or any custom JQL filter
So you can visualize progress in a way that fits your workflow - not the other way around.
Overall, it’s still the same Jira data. Just presented in a way that feels more visual, and a bit more alive.
A small shift, but meaningful
Reveal doesn’t replace Agile metrics. It simply presents them in a more human way.
Instead of asking:
“How many points are done?”
You start thinking:
“How much of the picture is already there?”
And that small shift makes progress easier to feel - not just measure.
Where this works best
Reveal works best when progress needs to be simple and visible to everyone - not just the team.
Some teams even display it on a large screen in the office. As tasks are completed, the image gradually appears, creating a shared view of progress throughout the day.
In some cases, teams even connect the image to what they are building - a product UI, a concept, or a visual goal. That way, progress doesn’t just show how much is done, but also what the team is moving toward.
If you want to try it
If this idea sounds interesting, you can find Reveal on the Atlassian Marketplace and try it in your Jira dashboard.
Sometimes a different perspective is all it takes to make familiar things feel new again.
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Tetiana Bondar
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