hi guys in today's video we're gonna talk about burn down chart if you are
into project management I'm sure you will come across the term burn down
chart you may be asked to produce the burn down chart whether you are running
an agile project or not so today we're gonna take a look at how to create the
burn down chart if you don't have a JIRA project or if you don't have any agile
tools to create those charts so let's get started I'm Nick and you're on next
projects channel hey guys welcome back so if you don't know me I'm Michele a
PMP and CSM certified project management professional I'm here to help you
provide tips and tricks on project management so in today's topic I thought
I'll give something about the burndown chart and how you can create it in a
very simple and easy way one of these days I was asked to create a burndown
chart by my leadership and they were curious to know how things are
progressing based on what we have planned for us so that's when the
burndown chart comes into play so burndown chart if you don't know is
basically a X and y-axis graph where you can measure the progress against time
you can see that you have x axis and it is measured against time and quantity so
here you are measuring on the y axis against the quantity feature or time so
before we get into burndown chart let's see you have 10 tasks that you have to
finish in 10 days so that's your time you have 10 days to finish so you'll
start with day 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 right so basically you have on the
y-axis 10 things that you have to deliver it could be a task it could be a
story feature whatever the case that is you have something to deliver within 10
days so you start your day on the day 10 you have all 10 things pending right so
that's where you start so this gray line is an average so let's say if your team
is capable of delivering one task per day this gray line represents that
burning out in a1 as coming down on it bases all the way to zero so let's say
on day ten your steam started but they couldn't finish any task or feature
whatever you are measuring and so it would be flatline today nine because
nothing was delivered and let's say on day eight also it was the same case so
if you go on here it will be still flatline so by looking
at this you can see that it's supposed to be here and actually you are standing
here so that gives a great indication for the leadership team to know that
okay you planned something and you're supposed to be here on day eight but you
did not so that's what the burndown shot is all about all right so now we can see
how easy it is to create in Excel it it's pretty easy you just have to do a
three column table and I'm gonna take you right into the excel right here so
right now I already have an excel here with the calendar days planned and
actual and this is how the burndown looks like so this is nothing but I have
a tasks that are let's say I have a total task as ten it could be tasks or
stories or issues whatever you want to call but that's what this ten represents
on the top so you have to start from ten and come all the way to zero that's your
burning down the chart right or burning down the number of open items and then
you have 10 days so have split the number of days here right now you see on
the excel you have 12 because I have included two weekends so that's the
weekend there I'll highlight in yellow and that's why you see the flat line in
the plan and then basically the actual is when you actually make the progress
or when the team makes the progress that's when you come back and come in
and update the actuals so at the beginning of the day it's gonna be the
same as the planned but the next day let's say team finished one point as
planned so it will become 9:00 and you can see the orange is falling on to the
blue the blue line is the planned one and the
orange is the actual so let me put that back as 10 that means the team did not
complete as planned so it's a flat orange line it is far away from the blue
line so that's how leadership can see as to what was planned let's say on the
27th of November team managed to finish one point so it was burnt down to nine
it's still not meeting the blue line because as per the plan team was
supposed to complete eight let's say on 28 November
you know team made good progress and they completed additional three to bring
down the actual to six so then now you can see the orange line is falling below
the blue line which is a good thing so here you can see that the team is making
you progress and it actually is ahead of schedule so that's how this chart helps
to see how we are progressing so we can name this chart and call it as burn down
chart and the next day on Friday let's say the team completed or did not do
anything it's still at six so it kind of made the planned time so that's how it
is and on weekends it's gonna remain same because nobody worked on it and the
next day team managed to finish one more so it's five and the next day team did
not do anything for the next two days with flatlined
so as you can see the orange progress as you know you fill in the actual so
that's how the burndown works and how you can report out now let's see how I
created this bond on chart so basically what I did was I selected the I created
these columns called calendar days and started from a Monday or you can start
whenever your project start date is and then the planned I have ten tasks so I
have to plan you know each day how much am I gonna complete eventually it has to
come down to zero so you just have to make sure that you know that's a plan
right and then the actual like it doesn't need to be ten nine eight seven
it can be like ten and let's say eight eight six
and then 4 4 2 2 1 it can be like this it doesn't matter right what you're
planning is what goes in here so this is like a baseline your day and the plan
whereas the actuals is when the team make progress that you have to come in
and update how much is pending right let's say the team makes two progress
you know if the team was able to complete two things then it will be ten
minus two that'll be eight so it'll meet the target as planned so that's the
concept so now let's see how to create the chart so you select all the three
columns go to insert and come down to chart and select the line chart from the
list of options and then pick the 2d line with the markers on click on that
and voila you have already the burndown chart and as you update the progress on
the chart you can see the orange line moving across and that's how your
burndown chart looks like alright guys so that's all for today and if this
video helps you understand what burndown chart is and how to create in excel give
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so signing off see you in the next one take care bye I'm here to help you
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