Comments on: What’s in a name, like Burndown Chart?

By: Gabriel Rosas

Gabriel Rosas — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:42:36 +0000

I know this is an old thread, but nice to read about others experiencing the little aspects of the agile process.

Our team is experiencing all sorts of struggles with the way we utilize Rally/Agile. I believe it started as a well intentioned way to track team progress; that was when it was a tool that we were getting familiar with.

18 months later, it has transformed into a bloated process that seems slows down process. We never seem to have successful iterations as a team, and it feels more like a tool for management to crack down on individual performance, and a way to shame individual performance failures. So our focus is completely on individual performance, and not on team wins.

Not sure how we can fix this type of problem.

By: Jean Tabaka

Jean Tabaka — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:06:23 +0000

Erik, I am glad that you too are emphasizing the power of team commitment and hence the need to only measure what you want to improve….team commitment! That means the team learns to hold itself accountable for what it commits to, how it formulates that commitment, and how truly committed each team member is. Thanks for your post!

By: Erik Buitenhuis

Erik Buitenhuis — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:22:12 +0000

Tracking individual burndown leads to team members maximizing their own individual output. This is suboptimal as we are concerned with the team output.
As many others noted, it also hinders team commitment, and can lead to other unwanted effects like competition.
What you measure is important because people will behave differently if you measure different things.
… you get what you ask for …

By: Jean Tabaka

Jean Tabaka — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:03:48 +0000

Again, thanks all, and thanks Rebecca. I am still concerned about individuals believing they should track their own burndowns if they want to.

A burndown is about committed items and whether they are going to get done or not. It is not about someone’s burned up hours and therefore they have run out of time.

And to jump in from another perspective, when adopting Agile, the organizational goal should be to eliminate as much bloat and waste, anything non-value-add, as possible. Adding in individual burndowns is the opposite of slimming down. It is yet more process! Just not getting my head around adding more metrics and process, especially not at the individual level.

But keep the ideas coming!

Am I missing something?

By: Rebecca Robbins

Rebecca Robbins — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:27:47 +0000

I can’t agree with the last few comments more. Scrum is all about the team, not the individual, per se. It is based on team accountability, trust, and cohesiveness. If members of the team want to see their own velocity by means of an individual burndown, then give them the tool. It most certainly should not be something that happens during the standup or in a team environment unless all have agreed to it and the intention makes sense (Retrospective?) as well as timing.

By: Malcolm Lisle

Malcolm Lisle — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:55:02 +0000

Are we talking Scrum Master or Project Manager here?
Surely a burn down chart is to show the overall performance of the project not to track the performance of individual team members.
With the best will in the world, if individual burn down chart information is available the management chickens will want to see it. Once this happens it will not be long before fingers start being pointed and you end up with a group of individuals watching their backs rather than a coherent team. Then bang go the benefits of Scrum.
It is the Scrum Masters job to protect the team from this sort of threat so the team can work more efficiently. I know that the Scrum Master role is not always easy, having to balance the needs of the team with the needs of management, but this seems to lean too far towards serving managements immediate needs at the risk of the longterm needs of the project and the ultimate benefits management will receive.

By: James Peckham CSP

James Peckham CSP — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:40:06 +0000

Good call jean. The burndown is a ‘sensor’ for seeing the health of the team and finding out how focused they are. Going up rapidly, maybe they found a bunch of new tasks or didn’t decompose enough early on. Flat lining, maybe the customer can’t decide on a requirement or the team hasn’t updated the sprint backlog in a while. Burning down too fast, maybe the team didn’t take enough or hasn’t discovered all the facts! Burning down too perfectly, maybe the team is sandbagging to make things look good, or maybe they’re right on track.

We often have managers ask questions only when the burn down looks “bad”.

Scrum doesn’t care if it’s good or bad news, only that there’s news. And don’t believe a perfect burndown means things are going smoothly.

I find it damaging when managers question burn downs that don’t look good… leaving employees to think that they have to fudge until it looks good like they did back in waterfall.

Lastly, and more to the point. Scrum doesn’t concern itself with individual accountability. Only team accountability. If you start focusing on individual performance then they’ll go right back to only caring about individual contribution.

By: Jean Tabaka

Jean Tabaka — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:27:58 +0000

Thank you Jeroen! You said it with stronger language than me, but I am glad to support you with 3 cents! The burndown really is about the work not about individuals performance. Misuse of it leads to all kinds of bad smells.

By: Jeroen

Jeroen — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:54:58 +0000

Individual Burndown is not just a bad smell, it seems to me to be a whole heap of dung. I use a burndown that give the individuals a field to tell the others they have picked up the task listed.
If the individual uses this to track his/her own burndown, I advise against it. Scrum IS about team effort, “doing” something about a not performing team member is SO wrong it curls my toes. Management is not supposed to influence anything within the team, if they can “do something” about someone they deem to not perform in the team the scrum master needs to think about being in the right place.
Self empowerment (through trust) is very important to the motivation of a team. If teammembers are singled out for their perceived bad performance this disturbes the team and their motivation. Scrum will hopelessly fail and be contorted in some hideous control framework for management to play with.

(my two cents)

By: Jean Tabaka

Jean Tabaka — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:16:22 +0000

Thank you all for your replies. I have to admit that I am surprised at the number of responses that fully or mildly support the notion of individual burndown charts. Let’s try to look at this from a different perspective. If you really need individual data about anything, I propose that you track individual burndown by STORY/TASK, NOT by individual person. The goal of the burndown chart is to tell if the ITEMS (Stories/Tasks) are getting DONE to the committed “Definition of Done”. That is what it is meant to inform. If an item isn’t getting done, we turn to the team and ask them the causes.

Tracking individual team member’s burndown suggests to me what Joseph said (so please read through his comments to get them.) It is some sense of distrust of team and hence a need to hold greater accountability for the individual.

To reiterate, what Scrum and Agile ask us to track is item doneness. Effort is simply the measure of whether the committed items are going to get done. To Drew’s comment, I think some Agile executive education is in order to fully grasp this paradigm shift.

Does this help?

And, again, thanks all for your comments. They are helping me to think this through and offer some clarity around my post!