Release burndown - Why is the Original estimate at the start of the version showing zero

[Libu Baby]

I created a new version - 'Release 1' and updated the Fix Version of all the stories in JIRA  ( stories that are completed in previous sprints and the stories that are planned in future ) with this version 'Release1'. Why is the Original estimate at start of version showing zero. I was expecting it will add up all the storypoints and show a total storypoints, say 1000.

[Andy Heinzer]

This report is geared towards showing how your team is progressing through this work towards a release.   It sounds like you created this new version and then changed all these issues that were already completed in these past sprints to set them to use this new fix version.

The Original estimate at the start of the version is supposed to be the work that is estimated to be fixed by that version before any sprints are started or completed towards issues in that fix version.   But since it seems like there was already work done in past sprints, you can still add issues to that new fix version, but I would not expect the original estimate to re-run the calculation here.  This estimate is only expected to be calculated before the first sprint is started that contains any issues with that fix version.

I hope that explains why the original estimate is showing a value of 0 here. 

[Keith Shaw]

Thank you for the detailed answer @Andy Heinzer !

[Michael Deckert]

Hi @Andy Heinzer :

I also always see this "0 sprint ". I see two scenarios:

• As issues can only be assigned to a version after creating it, I could create a new version and move existing prepared stories or remaining unsolved stories into it within the last running sprint of the previous release. (I think this is what I normally do). Of course we are not working on these issues before starting the first sprint of the new release.
• I could also do this after closing the last sprint of the previous release and before starting the first sprint of the new release. So the whole creation process would have to be done outside a sprint.

Which solution will not have the "0 sprint"? Do I even have to do this whole creation process "outside a sprint"?

BTW: my current chart looks like this:

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi Michael,

I think what is happening is that since you are moving a bunch of issues from a previous release/version into the first sprint of a new release/version, it could be that these issues have already started work on at least some of them.  I believe that explains why you see a zero for original estimate at start of this particular version.

The idea behind this report is to try to give you an estimate of how much work your team can get through in a sprint in order to understand how much work remains until you can release that version.  However if all the issues are not being given estimates before the sprint is started, OR the issues are already being worked on before the version is created it will likely cause the graph to have a zero for that first column here. 

There is an expectation that the versions would be created and exist in this project before these issues start work on them, and these issues would have estimates on them before the sprint they are first added to is started.  If you can manage those details, I think that you will find the graphs will start to have initial estimation values before the first sprints of this particular graph.

There is more information about how this report works over in View and understand the release burndown report.

I hope this helps.

Andy

[Michael Deckert]

I'm pretty sure I have started tasks so maybe this is it. But I will play around on the next releases with some ideas I got from the docu. Thanks for the link