Project Burndown on a multiteam project

[Darren Martz]

Using rapidboards, how do I setup a project burndown when I have 5 scrum teams?

There are three artifacts that I am looking for:

1. Project Burndown
2. Team Burndown
3. Team Sprint Burndown

How does that work with the new RapidBoard system?

So far I have only found the team sprint burndown using rapid boards.

In another post it was said that RapidBoards support scrum of scrums. I have never liked that model, but perhaps that is how project burndowns can be reported? But how?

[sclowes · Accepted solution]

Hi Darren,

You can have multiple Rapid Boards looking over the same sets of issues. For example, one Rapid Board can see the entire project, one can be for a subset for a team. The whole project Rapid Board will then include all the information for the project. For example the Cumulative Flow Diagram will show the progress for the whoel project.

In regards to burndowns at the moment the Rapid Board only supports a per Sprint burndown (i.e. it does not have an arbitrary date range burndown). I'm not 100% what your current setup is to get you a project, team and sprint burndown. The version hierarchy allows you to have a burndown that covers multiple versions/sprints or single versions/sprints so I can see how you might say per Sprint or per Project so I'm guessing per team is using a context? Could you provide some additional information on your setup (and maybe some screenshots) so we can consider this in the future?

Thanks,
Shaun

[Darren Martz]

Mostly I want to see:

• how a sprint is progressing against the plan in hours (Rapid Board does that)
• what each teams velocity is in story points spanning multiple sprints
• how the overall project is progressing in story points towards a fixed delivery date. That means seeing a roll up of story points across multiple teams and multiple sprints.

We have 5 teams working on the same product and need reporting at a few levels for different audiences.

It would also be sweet to get that in the wallboard plugin. We almost purchased a couple TV's for the office, but put that on hold when Rapid Boards lacked the support.

[Darren Martz]

We are using the classic greenhopper right now and looking to move to rapid boards, but are trying to map our needs.

I noticed the rapid board burndown is based on a per board setting of either story points or hours. The burndown chart does not allow flipping between the two views. That does mean I can get a project story point burn down with a project specific board. That is cool.

What I still cannot see is if I have a targeted ship date and a backlog, where is the chart that tells me (based on velocity) when the backlog will be complete compared to the targeted ship date? Is there a way to indicate a minimum ship feature set? I can certainly add a field and tag stories to say which are must versus maybe, but charting that is very helpful.

[Darren Martz]

Correction - the project board can only display a sprint burn down, not a project burn down. My view is restricted to a 2 week window. How can I see where I expect to be 6 months out? Where is that chart?

[Darren Martz]

I just heard back from Atlassian on this. The current rapid board system does not look beyond the current sprint for charting. The classic board system does look beyond the sprint.

[sclowes]

Wow, that's not quite true. The velocity chart shows the result from sprint to sprint in the chart.

You're right that there's no overall 'progress' chart. One option would be to use the Cumulative Flow Diagram (which will show all issues included in that Rapid Board, i.e the whole project), though it will use issue count rather than estimate statistic.

[Darren Martz]

In classic, I can create a version called "construction" with a date 6 months out. The charts show my path towards that date. How can I do that in the rapid board system? Perhaps I missed something, and perhaps Atlassian technical sales missed it too.

All I can see is the past, which is cool, and the current running sprint(s), which is also cool. What I do not see is a projection to a future delivery date based on velocity.

[sclowes]

We don't currently have a Rapid Board chart for this, though it has been requested a few times. As I mentioned before the Cumulative Flow Diagram might the most immediately useful for this if we change it to use story points as you can already set it for arbitrary dates.

This is something we plan to address in the future.

Thanks,
Shaun

[Darren Martz]

Thanks Shaun. I understand you are a key person in the product design too :)

I was thinking (and commented on another thread) that Greenhopper could use a 3rd board type for release management. At that level its mostly about cross team and sprint reporting for a specific product and trying to see when your team(s) will likely complete a subset of the product backlog. The rapid boards cover having multiple teams working on multiple products which is awesome, but its the release management of a single product that is now awkward.

Cumulative flow does have a variable date range which is cool, but for release management the dates all look to the past. To look forward, I think the charts need the current velocity and the backlog story points. It's that Alice in Wonderland thing "if you don't know where you're going, then any road will take you there". We could use some help in this area.

The rapid board design is really nice, its clean, its very well designed. Something on release management will make it usable for larger teams/products.

[Craig Bye]

In my opinion this is a big loss of functionality with the rapid board. If there is no way to get a multi-sprint view of the backlog over time, you really can't see where you are heading without going to excel. I don't mind Atlassian moving Rapid Board forward, but my teams are having to go back to Classic View out of necessity. The Rapid Board just doesn't get used without this functionality.

[Ato Jackson-Kuofie]

Is the Project Burndown functionality available now? I'm trying to find this feature.

[Craig Bye]

In my opinion this is a big loss of functionality with the rapid board. If there is no way to get a multi-sprint view of the backlog over time, you really can't see where you are heading without going to excel. I don't mind Atlassian moving Rapid Board forward, but my teams are having to go back to Classic View out of necessity. The Rapid Board just doesn't get used without this functionality.

[Darren Martz]

Anyone? I see the 10.3 release has a new velocity chart and the upcoming 10.4 moves to rapid board as the default. But I still am having difficulty getting these 3 artifacts using rapid boards.

The classic board gives me project, team, and sprint burndown charts based on the version hierarchy. How does that work with rapid boards?