How can I create a burndown chart in Jira with issues that are resolved in the future?

Question

I’ve been asked to work on a requirements Burndown chart POC in Jira.  I was able to validate that the projects will be able to easily track requirements in Jira and show the progress on a Burndown Chart.

For report mockup purposes, the team wants to be able to show what the report will look like at the end of the requirements validation sprint. Unfortunately, I’m not able to get the Burndown chart to mockup future resolved requirements. For example, if my sprint duration is October 26 – October 30 and I import the issues into Jira with a Date Resolved of October 30, the Burndown chart reflects that the issues were resolved/closed today not on the future date of October 30.

I know Jira is working by design, but I was hoping there was a workaround that would allow me to create a mockup of the Burndown chart.

Thanks!

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted Answer

There's a few things you can do to try to predict or plan, but you should move away from "burdown" here.  Burndown is a predictive tool, but all of the data it works from is historical.  Whilst it can try to tell you about what you might achieve in the future, that's based on "we predicted X, we did Y, so expect Z".  Whilst it can tell you a lot about what to expect, it can't tell you what might happen if you start dropping in "we resolved that ahead of time".

You are not going to be able to get a burndown chart that is forward-dated, wiith issues resolved in the future, unless you change to not resolving them on import, but resolving them during backlog refinement or during the sprint.

I do not want to mislead you here - there is nothing "wrong" with your process or data.  It is not great for the way Jira wants to report, so what Jira looks at for "burndown" might not work for you.  More info on your process might help us point at better Jira ways to do them.