Program increment burndown by story

About this report

As the name of the report indicates, the Program Increment Burndown by Story report shows the story 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 to understand whether stories are being accepted on time--the goal being to complete them all during the PI. You can filter the chart by PI, program, release vehicle, product, theme group, and Scrum Masters/product owners.

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.
4. Stories must be assigned to sprints. 

How are report values calculated? 

1. Start Date = Start Date of PI minus one day (for example, the chart for a PI starting on June 1 will start at May 31)
2. Program Increment End Date (gray dotted line visible during ongoing PI) = Finish Date of PI
3. Ideal Burn = Ideal trend downward of Effort Points on stories from the report Start Date to the PI End 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 the than sum of all story points for the current PI. Average Velocity equals the sum of LOE of last five completed Sprints.
4. Remaining = sum of all Effort Points on unaccepted stories on each day of the report time period
5. Value Points Remaining = Sum of all Value Points on unaccepted stories on each day of the report time period
6. Predicted = Predicted trend downward of remaining Effort Points on unaccepted stories. 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.
7. Optimistic = Predicted Trend * 1.2
   
8. Pessimistic = Predicted Trend * 0.8
   

Notes: 

1. Effort and value points for a story are credited on the day the story is accepted. 
2. If there are un-estimated stories, those stories are not reflected in the Expected or Points Remaining numbers, as they do not have any points allocated to them. 
3. 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 stories. Expected line will start at 5k. On day two of the PI, 1000 more effort points are added to stories. Expected line will start at 6k. 
4. 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. 
5. If the points remaining line is burning down faster than the Program Increment Burndown by Feature 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. 
6. 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

This chart shows the trend of unaccepted stories found by the dashboard filters (at a minimum one or more chosen PIs). The y-axis is the sum of story points. The x-axis is a time period determined by the earlier of: start and end dates of the PI, or the earliest date a story was accepted for a feature in the PI. 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 stories. 

Use this chart in conjunction with the Program Increment Burndown by Feature report to compare feature and story progress. If stories are accepted, but features are behind, this usually indicates too many features in process at once or features that are too large. The burndown by feature and story charts are identical unless there are orphan stories assigned to the PI. If there are orphan stories, the burndown by story chart includes them as well, and the story point values are higher than on the feature chart.