If burndown charts are used to visualize progress, what do they track? (choose the best answer)

A burndown chart is a fundamental tool for visualizing progress in Scrum. Its primary purpose is to show the amount of work remaining to be completed over a specific period. The vertical axis represents the work left to do (often measured in story points or hours), while the horizontal axis represents time (e.g., days of a Sprint). As the team completes work, the line on the chart "burns down" towards zero, providing a clear, at-a-glance view of progress against the plan.

B. Accumulated cost is a financial metric. While it can be tracked, it is not the purpose of a standard burndown chart, which focuses on remaining work effort.

C. A burn-up chart is used to track accumulated business value or the amount of work completed over time, showing an upward trend, not a downward one.

D. Burndown charts track the collective progress of the entire team against the backlog. Scrum principles discourage tracking individual productivity to foster team collaboration and shared ownership.

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1. Scrum.org

The Scrum Glossary: "Burndown Chart: A chart which shows the amount of work which is thought to remain in a backlog. Time is shown on the horizontal axis and work remaining on the vertical axis." (Scrum.org is the official home of Scrum

co-founded by Ken Schwaber).

2. Schwaber

K.

& Sutherland

J. (2020). The 2020 Scrum Guide. The official Scrum body of knowledge states

"Various practices exist to forecast progress

like burn-downs

burn-ups

or cumulative flows." This sanctions the use of burndowns for tracking progress. (p. 9).

3. Al-Zewairi

M.

Al-Malaise Al-Ghamdi

S.

& Al-Yahya

M. (2017). Understanding the Factors that Impact the Accuracy of Burndown Charts in Agile Software Development. Journal of Systems and Software

131

175-195. "The burndown chart is a graphical chart that shows the work remaining to be done versus the time." (Section 1

Introduction

para. 1). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2017.05.051

4. University of California

Berkeley. CS 169: Software Engineering Courseware. Lecture materials on Agile Development define the Sprint Burndown Chart as a "publicly displayed chart showing remaining work in the Sprint backlog... updated every day." This aligns with tracking work remaining over time.