How changing Story Points and Stories affect the Epic burndown report

[Peter Phillips]

When estimating an Epic, we create a single story in the Epic and assign a story point (SP) estimate to that story. When work begins and we start to break the Epic down into stories, we reduce the SP count on the original place holder story to match any SPs we assign to new stories.

In the Epic example below, we started with a single story in the Epic that equaled 150 SPs. As we added stories over time, the report makes it look like we are increasing scope, even though we reduce the original story by an equal number of SPs. The change in overall SP value on the Epic should be 0. 

We expect that the original estimate should read 150, and by the time this snapshot was taken, our original place holder story is down to 0 SPs, but that number has changed over time as well - down to 93 in the view below. Can anyone help explain this behavior in the report?

[Michal Kurtak]

Hello, 

Have you found a workaround? We are experiencing same problem with epic burndown charts. We have a release planning meeting, where we estimate "bigger" stories (e.g. 90 SP). During refinement meetings we break these "big" stories into user stories and tasks. (set estimate of original story to 0 and create new stories with more accurate estimates).

Michal