What is required to make a card impact the burndown chart?

Question

The Setup

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I have a custom workflow in place. Here's the flow:

* NEW IDEA
DEVELOPING/IN PROGRESS
PEER REVIEW
READY FOR TESTING
TESTING NOW
** READY FOR LIVE
** LIVE

There are 3 categories provided when you make Worklows. They are...

* NEW
* IN PROGRESS
* COMPLETE

The NEW IDEA status is attributed as the NEW category.

The READY FOR LIVE and LIVE statuses are attributed with the COMPLETE category.

The others are all categorized by IN PROGRESS.

The Problem

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When I move something over to READY FOR LIVE, I expect it to impact the burndown chart. After all, it's one of the two COMPLETE category cards. However, it doesn't affect the burndown chart and I'm left with something that looks like this.

[Will add image, but it shows a burndown chart that doesn't go down.]

Everything that does go down only does so as part of LIVE, which is not the behavior I want. How can I make the card affect the burndown chart at READY FOR LIVE? I've tried messing with the Resolution field to no avail (marking Done or Fixed does not make a card affect the burndown), and I've also tried artificially adding the CLOSED status to affect the burndown chart.

Still, it's only when I move something to LIVE that it burns down. What's required for it to burn down at READY FOR LIVE?

Peter Van de Voorde · Answer

Hi Danny,

the burndown chart doesn't take the categories into account as far as I know.

It will only react when the issue in the utter most right column of your board.

So you could map Ready of Live and Live both onto the uttermost right column of your board and that should fix your problem.

Best regards,

Peter

John Paz1 · Answer

I encountered this problem as well with my company's ultra-custom workflow. We had a workflow that had DONE as well as ACCEPTED as COMPLETE statuses.

I noted that the burndown was not moved unless there was only one category in COMPLETE.

Our solution was to remove the ACCEPTED status from the COMPLETE column, which meant that the burndown actually burned down when things were DONE, but the burndown was not effected when stories were ACCEPTED.

This was only a minor inconvenience for us, because we decided to just make an ACCEPTED swimlane for our Sprint Review meetings. Once a story gets ACCEPTED, it will be displayed in the ACCEPTED swimlane.

Here is a comment I found posted on Atlassian's JIRA Agile doc, suggesting a similar workaround, at least in regards to only mapping one status to COMPLETE:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Viewing+the+Burndown+Chart?focusedCommentId=430605812#comment-430605812