Program increment burndown by feature

About this report

As the name of this chart on the program increment progress report indicates, the program increment burndown by feature shows the feature burndown for the PI. A burndown chart represents work remaining versus time; the outstanding work is on the vertical axis and time is on the horizontal axis. The chart is especially useful for Portfolio Managers and Release Train Engineers for predicting when all work will be completed; it provides a high-level understanding of whether the work for a PI is on track. You can filter the chart by PI, program, release vehicle, product, theme group, and Scrum Masters/product owners.

Find this chart on the program increment progress report:

1. Select Portfolios, Solutions, Programs, or Products in the top navigation bar and select the entity you want to view information about.
2. On the sidebar, select Reports in the list of options.
3. Select Program increment progress; the report displays.

Prerequisites

1. PI must exist in the system and be tied to a program. 
2. Features must be created and tied to the PI. 
3. Stories, with point values, must be created and tied to features.

Note: If a feature has multiple program assignments, only the stories with a program that matches the sidebar selection are included in the report.

How are report values calculated? 

1. Start Date = Start Date of the PI. 
2. Program Increment End Date (gray dotted line visible during ongoing PI) = Finish Date of the PI plus one day (for example, the chart for a PI ending on May 31 will end at June 1).
3. Ideal Burn Starting Point = Sum of all Effort Points on child stories of features as of today
4. Ideal Burn = Ideal trend downward of Accepted Effort Points on child stories of features from the PI Start Date to the PI Finish Date. The formula is Average Velocity / Average Sprint Days. If total sprint count is greater than 0, then Average Sprint Days = Total Days Count in the PI / Sprint Count else Average Sprint Days = 20. The Expected Trend maximum cannot be higher than the sum of all story points for the current PI Increment. Average Velocity equals the sum of LOE of last five completed sprints.
5. Remaining = Sum of all Effort Points on unaccepted child stories of unaccepted features on each day of the report time period
6. Value Points Remaining = Sum of all Value Points on unaccepted child stories of unaccepted features on each day of the report time period
7. Predicted = Predicted trend downward of remaining Effort Points on child stories of unaccepted features. The Predicted daily burn rate is calculated based on the sum of all scrum (Agile-type) teams in the programs’ average velocities during their last 5 completed sprints.
   Note: For detailed information on the Predicted daily burn rate, as well as the underlying team velocities used in the calculation, select the Burn Details button at the top-right of the report.
8. Optimistic = Predicted Trend * 1.2
9. Pessimistic = Predicted Trend * 0.8

Notes:

1. Effort and Value points for a feature are credited on the day the feature is accepted. Only Effort and Value points of accepted stories will be credited.
2. If there are un-estimated child stories, those stories are not reflected in the Expected or Points Remaining numbers, as they do not have any points allocated to them.
3. Misaligned stories, which are associated with a different PI than their parent feature, are not included. Misaligned stories will not be counted in the Expected and Points Remaining numbers.
4. If effort points are added or removed during the PI, the Expected line will adjust so that the starting point number is always the total sum at the moment you are looking at the report. Example: on day one of the PI, there are 5000 effort points on child stories of features. Expected line will start at 5k. On day two of the PI, 1000 more effort points are added to child stories of features. Expected line will start at 6k.
5. If the points remaining line spikes upwards, that indicates an increase in scope of points – either additional stories were added or estimates were revised upwards.
6. If the points remaining line is burning down slower than the “Program Increment Burndown (by Story)” points remaining line, this is because stories are being accepted, but the parent feature is not being accepted. This indicates working on too many features at once without completing them, and/or orphaned stories being accepted that have no parent feature. Use the Work in Process report and the Work Tree report to identify these two issues.
7. The burndown chart only includes those stories that directly belong to a PI or whose sprint belongs to a PI. The chart shows only those story points that were burned during the period of a given PI.

How to interpret this report

As features are accepted, the orange line trends downward. This chart is the burndown of story points for all stories parented to a feature assigned to the selected program and PI. Once the feature is accepted, Points Remaining will reduce by the total points for the accepted stories under the feature. If the feature is accepted, but none of its child stories are, there will be no burndown for Points Remaining.

The orange line shows the effort points (LOE) remaining and the purple line shows the value points (LOV) remaining, so you can choose either effort or value as the burndown display. The dark blue line shows the ideal burn rate for accepting features. The y-axis is the sum of story points for all child stories of the features. The x-axis is a time period determined by the start and end dates of the PI*.

Note: 

• *If filtering by a release vehicle, the start and end dates of the x-axis will match the release vehicle