Is the story points burndown really helpful?

Ivar
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August 27, 2013

I've recently started to wonder if a burndown based on story points is very much helpful?

In the future when we estimated only subtasks using story points, the burndown told me that we burned story points, and the guideline told me if we were on or off target.

Now, moving to rapid boards, we start to estimate the stories using story points and the sub-tasks using hours. So we end up with a burndown of story points similar to this, https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Viewing+the+Burndown+Chart, that doesn't ease my mind as project manager until the last day of the sprint.

I get that the burndown of hours will provide me with at least knowledge that people are working. And a report of estimates vs. logged hours can indicate if we are spending more or less time then expected. But what does the burn down of story points really give me? Can anyone help me "decrypt" them?

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Ivar
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September 5, 2013

I surfed around a bit and found several articles; ex. this one: http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/scrumburndown.php

Fred Mastropasqua June 21, 2016

Great article. This really explains why the JIRA burndown is not useful. Burndown by hours is a great team tool as long as it's not used to micromanage.

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