Burndown Chart Not Displaying Correctly - Board Configuration Incorrect?

[Nicholas Yu]

Issue: Burndown chart is painting a straight red line (remaining values) everyday but there is no estimate (guideline) project or burndown of work that is being performed based on board configuration. I should see a burn down since the team changed several statuses from To Do, In Progress, and Ready for Testing. 

Any guidance is appreciated. 

See pictures for setup. What am I doing wrong and what configuration settings do I need to change to get the burndown chart setup properly? 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Um, actually, it's working fine.

You do have a guideline in your diagram - it's the grey line running along the x-axis.  This has happened because you started the sprint (which sets the estimate for the sprint) before you had any issues in it. 

You then added issues into the sprint, which gives you the vertical scope change line.

There is also an incidental problem with your board filter - it includes a sprint id, it should never do that

[Nicholas Yu]

Strange. Its actually the opposite. We added all the issues with story points and then started the sprint. However, we did adjust the time when we started the sprint; it was the afternoon and we changed the time to something in the AM. 

Is there anything I can do to remedy the situation to get a useable burndown chart? 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Interesting, I've never done that, but it makes sense if you added the issues to the sprint, started it, and then adjusted the time back to a point before you added the issues. 

The chart is looking at the start date/time of the sprint, of course, but I'm not sure I would have expected it to recalculate the burn when you moved the start time.

There's a simple test though, which I would put money on fixing it - change the start date/time again, ideally to something like 1 minute after you put the issues into the sprint.

I'd expect that to fix it - it looks like the chart is looking at start time and then the "put into sprint" time of the issues to work out what was committed to at the start of the sprint (and hence guideline), so making the start time after you committed to the issues should fix it.  It won't impact your reporting much, it'll just look like your sprint was 14.5 days instead of the usual 15, and that doesn't really matter because the reporting looks at sprints, not the actual time a sprint takes!  And if it doesn't help, you can always put it back.

[Nicholas Yu]

Nic, thanks for the tip for adjusting the time forward after adding the issues. I see the grey guideline now! However, the remaining value line (red) is still flat. 

 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Excellent!  Well, for that part of the problem anyway.

The next question is what have you marked as "done"?  The red line looks at "done", which, for Jira, means "issues in the sprint that you have moved into the last column in the board".

[Nicholas Yu]

With the board configured to "Remaining Estimate and Time Spent" and my columns setup with To Do, In Progress, Ready for Testing, and Done. I would think the burndown would show progress based on issue status? I have 23 issues in Progress and 12 issues Ready for Testing. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, it bases the burndown on "done", but your "ready for testing" column is not "done".  From the screenshot, there's nothing complete yet.

[Dave Mathijs]

Hi @Nicholas Yu  welcome to the Atlassian Community.

Do your issues in Done status actually have a resolution?

Because you have set the Time Tracking to 'None', issues will burn down their Story Points value upon completion.

[Nicholas Yu]

Hi Dave, thank you for the welcome and quick response. 

I don't have any issues with a done status yet. I do see your point on the configuration if Time Tracking is set to None, then this would be the expect behavior. However, I failed to note, I did toggle the configuration to "Remaining Estimate and Time Spent" and had the same behavior.