🚨Scrum burndown chart vs. Jira’s native reports: What you’re missing

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Jira’s native burndown chart can leave Scrum teams frustrated. It only tracks a single sprint and offers little flexibility, making it hard to see the big picture or adapt to changes. Teams lack insight into multi-sprint progress or cross-team status, and forecasting beyond a basic guideline is impossible. Enter the Scrum burndown chart gadget by Broken Build – a solution designed to fill these gaps.

👉 Check out this interactive Scrum burndown chart example to see it in action.

The limitations of Jira’s native chart

Jira’s default Burndown chart is quite basic, and teams often outgrow its functionality. Here are the key limitations of Jira’s out-of-the-box approach to Scrum burndown charts:

❌ Limited to a single sprint: The Jira Scrum burndown chart only visualizes one active sprint on one Scrum board. There’s no easy way to build a burndown for a broader scope (like an epic or release) or across multiple teams/projects using native reports.

❌ No forecasting or “what-if” analysis: The native chart simply shows actual progress against an ideal line. It doesn’t project completion dates or let you explore scenarios (e.g. “When will we finish if our velocity stays the same?”).

❌ Not available as a dashboard gadget: Jira’s burndown is confined to the Reports section of a board, so you can’t embed it on a Jira dashboard for always-visible tracking. This makes it harder to share or monitor at a glance compared to having a gadget on a team dashboard.

❌ Minimal insights & no drill-down: The built-in report can’t be filtered or broken down by issue type, team, etc., and it isn’t interactive. You cannot click on the chart to see which backlog items remain or understand the composition of work – it’s a static view of total remaining points only.

Powerful alternative: Scrum burndown chart by Broken Build

As a part of the Agile Burnup Burndown Charts, the Scrum burndown chart is a powerful Jira Dashboard app feature that addresses these pain points. It lets you visualize, track, and forecast work for any scope – even across multiple sprints or teams – all in one chart. This gadget brings flexible burndown reporting to your dashboard, enabling advanced forecasting and multi-team progress tracking that Jira’s native charts can’t provide. In short, it’s built to do the jobs Jira’s own burndown can’t: aggregating work from several boards, projecting realistic completion dates, and sharing live progress right on your dashboard.

Scrum burndown chart: Key features & JTBD

The Scrum burndown chart gadget comes with an array of features designed to help agile teams plan and predict more effectively. Here are its key features and the “jobs-to-be-done” they support:

📉 1. Automatic forecasts

The gadget automatically generates forecast lines on your burndown chart using historical data. It analyzes your previous sprints’ velocities and plots three projection lines: pessimistic, average, and optimistic scenarios (based on your minimum, average, and maximum velocity). These lines give an instant visual of how long it might take to complete the remaining work at different performance levels.

🎯 Why this helps: You get realistic timeline predictions at a glance. With automatic forecasts, you can plan sprints more confidently, communicate best-case and worst-case finish dates to stakeholders, and identify risks early if the team’s current burn-down trend indicates a potential delay.

🛠️ 2. DIY forecasting scenarios

Beyond the automatic projections, you can create your own “what-if” forecasting scenarios. The gadget lets you input either a hypothetical team velocity or a target completion date. For example, you can ask: “If our velocity becomes 50 story points per sprint, when will we finish?” or “If we need to finish by June 30, what velocity is required?” The chart will then show a customized projection line based on your inputs.

🎯 Why this helps: It empowers you to experiment and plan for different scenarios. You can estimate how much scope is achievable with a given team speed, adjust goals when priorities or team capacity change, and simulate best-case vs. worst-case timelines. This means no more guesswork – you can see the impact of changes right on the chart and make data-driven decisions about scope and schedule.

📈 3. Remaining work growth modeling

Not every sprint goes perfectly to plan – scope can grow as new work is discovered. This feature allows you to model what happens if your remaining work increases over time (i.e., scope creep). You can configure the gadget to assume a certain amount of new work is added each sprint (for example, +5 story points every sprint), or you can set a larger overall scope than currently planned. The chart will then adjust and show how the completion date moves out if the backlog keeps growing.

🎯 Why this helps: It lets the team anticipate the impact of scope creep before it’s too late. By visualizing how adding extra work each iteration pushes out your finish date, you can spot delivery risks early. This insight enables conversations about controlling scope or adding capacity, keeping everyone aware of the cost of adding “just one more thing” during the sprint or project.

🏁 4. Delivery planning with deadlines

If your project has a fixed deadline or target date, you can visualize it directly on the Scrum burndown chart. The gadget allows you to add a deadline marker (a vertical line on the date you’re aiming to complete). As the sprint or release progresses, you can clearly see how the actual burn-down line and forecasted completion date align (or don’t) with that target date.

🎯 Why this helps: It keeps the team aligned with time-bound goals. By seeing today’s progress against the marked deadline, everyone knows whether they are on pace or falling behind. If the trend shows a likely miss of the deadline, the team and stakeholders can immediately discuss course corrections (like de-scoping or increasing velocity) before the date arrives. In short, it makes deadlines transparent and front-of-mind for the whole team.

How Scrum burndown chart works in action

The best way to understand this gadget is to see it in action. We’ve prepared an interactive, clickable Scrum burndown chart example that you can explore in real time. Open it on a desktop browser and try adjusting parameters to see how the chart responds. This demo will show you exactly how the burndown chart gadget visualizes progress and forecasts as you update the scope or velocity.

👉 Burndown chart in Scrum example – Click here to explore a live, interactive example of the burndown chart in action.

Scrum burndown chart pro tips

• 💡 Drill down into data: The Scrum burndown chart isn’t just for high-level visuals – it’s interactive. You can click on any segment of the chart (e.g. a specific sprint or scope change) to see the list of Jira issues contributing to that portion of work. This is great for identifying which items were added or completed in a given sprint directly from the chart.

• 💡 Use breakdowns for deeper insight: Take advantage of the gadget’s 2-dimensional breakdown feature to analyze your burndown by different attributes. For example, you can break down remaining work by issue type (stories vs. bugs), by team, by project, or by priority. This helps answer questions like “Is most of our scope creep coming from new bugs or new stories?” in a visual way.

• 💡 Compare multiple burndowns side-by-side: Since this is a dashboard gadget, you can add multiple instances of the Scrum Burndown Chart on one screen. For example, place one burndown per team, or one per product release, on the same dashboard to compare progress. Each gadget can be configured with different boards or filters. This side-by-side view is invaluable for program-level tracking.

• 💡 Combine with other Agile charts: For a full picture, use the Scrum Burndown Chart alongside its sister gadgets like the burn-up chart (to visualize work completed) and the velocity chart (to track sprint speed). The Agile Reports & Gadgets bundle includes all of these (burndown, burnup, velocity, etc.) in one package. Having multiple charts together on your dashboard lets you correlate different metrics – for instance, see how increasing velocity affects the burndown trend, giving you richer insight into your team’s performance.

How to set up Scrum burndown chart on your Jira Dashboard

Getting started with the Scrum Burndown Chart gadget is straightforward. Just follow these steps to add it to your Jira dashboard:

1. Install the app: Make sure the Agile Burnup Burndown Charts app (which provides the gadget) is installed from the Atlassian Marketplace. If you don’t have it yet, you can start a free 30-day trial from the Marketplace.

2. Open your dashboard’s gadget menu: Go to your Jira dashboard and click the “Add gadget” button.

3. Find the gadget: In the gadget directory search bar, type “Agile Burnup Burndown Charts”.

4. Add and configure: Click Add to put the gadget on your dashboard. You’ll then be prompted to configure it – for example, select one or multiple Scrum boards as the data source, choose the estimation field (e.g., Story Points), and set any filters or forecast options as needed.

5. Save to view the chart: Once configured, save the gadget. You should now see an interactive burndown chart on your dashboard, updating with your team’s data. (You can add multiple instances of the gadget if you want to track different scopes in parallel.)

After setup, anyone with access to that dashboard can view the burndown chart’s progress and interact with it, just like in the example above. This makes it a great addition for Scrum Masters and project leads who want radiators of sprint status visible to the whole team.

Wrap-up

In summary, adopting a dedicated Scrum burndown chart gadget in Jira Dashboard can significantly elevate your team’s tracking and forecasting capabilities. By leveraging this tool, you can:

• ✅ Visualize any scope – Track progress for not only individual sprints, but also epics, releases, or multiple teams in one scrum burndown graph on your dashboard. This gives a complete picture beyond what the native sprint report offers.

• ✅ Forecast with confidence – Use automatic velocity-based projections and custom what-if scenarios to get a realistic sense of when work will be done. This scrum burndown chart gadget provides quick answers to “Are we on track?” and “What if things change?” without manual calculations.

• ✅ Adapt to scope changes – Model scope growth or backlog changes easily. You’ll see instantly how adding or removing work impacts your timeline, allowing you to manage scope creep and set expectations proactively in your burndown charts.

• ✅ Stay goal-oriented – Keep the team aligned with deadlines and sprint goals by visualizing target dates on the chart. Everyone can see how current progress stacks up against the plan, which fosters accountability and timely course corrections.

• ✅ Gain actionable insights – Dive deeper into the data with breakdowns and issue drill-downs. You can identify which work items or issue types are driving the trends, enabling informed decisions and discussions. In short, the burndown chart becomes not just a report, but an interactive tool for continuous improvement.

Don’t just take our word for it – explore the interactive example yourself to experience these benefits in real time.

👉 Interactive Scrum burndown report example

When you’re ready to upgrade your dashboard, you can get the Scrum burndown chart as part of the Agile Burnup Burndown Charts app or the comprehensive Agile Reports & Gadgets bundle (which includes burndown, burn-up, velocity, cycle time, and more) on the Atlassian Marketplace. Both are available with a free 30-day trial and are even free for small teams under 10 users.

Give it a try and supercharge your Jira reporting today!