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In this post, I’d like to comment on a request from a Rally client I recently visited. Their tool request? A burndown chart for each individual. We were in a small meeting and my intent had been to help them with their Agile adoption. “No, Jean, it is your Rally tool that is the problem.” Hmmmm. Let’s take a look. What seems to be the problem? “Your tool is not helping our ScrumMaster and management team track individual team members’ burndown during the Sprint. We absolutely have to have that.” Huh? I had to call foul and get the group to step back and talk about “What’s in a burndown chart and why?”
Individual team member tracking in a burndown chart is a bad smell. It suggests that the commitment made in the Sprint Planning meeting is not a team commitment. It also suggests that the management is not tracking value delivery, but rather team work. I dug further with this group about that. Each individual at this organization was expected to commit exactly to the number of hours any of their tasks would take, and stick to it. That commitment was meant to never change. If a team member was “taking too long” (which they claimed could only be known via individual burndown charts), management would then be able to “do something” about it. What happened to the Daily Standup for team check-in? But I digress.
Tracking in a burndown chart is meant to trace team commitment around the valued items it intends to deliver. At the end of the Sprint Planning meeting, it reflects the team’s initial estimate of effort to achieve that value delivery. During the Sprint, the burndown chart reflects daily, “Are we going to meet our commitment to delivering this value? If not, what is the single most important, the highest priority thing we must do today?” Finally, the burndown chart informs the Sprint Demo and Review about what happened with the team’s commitments to value delivery versus what they were able to complete.
What’s in a name? Well, when it is a burndown chart, there are three things:
- charting the initial Sprint Planning meeting team-wide commitment to the valued items the team can deliver in a timebox
- prompting the daily inspection of what is the most important thing the team must do today to meet that commitment
- informing the the team at Sprint review to evaluate how the team’s estimates and commitment compared to what value the team was able to deliver
About the Author: Jean Tabaka is a wine enthusiast, author and Agile Fellow at Rally Software Development. Subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS.
