Work Insights: Use a burndown chart to track team effort

A burndown chart allows teams to see their effort over time. The chart shows the amount of work completed in a project or sprint and the total amount of work remaining.

Who can use this?

Plans:

  • Enterprise

Permissions:

  • Owner
  • Admin
  • Editor

Find out if this capability is included in Smartsheet Regions or Smartsheet Gov.

Overview

Burndown charts can:

  • Help predict a team's likelihood of completing their work on time. 
  • Provide visibility into any potential scope issues that may occur.
  • Visualize your team's progress through a sprint or project and help keep your team on track.
  • Provide insight into team productivity and see how quickly your team works.
  • Help create a budget burndown for a project. 

Read the burndown chart 

A burndown chart includes the following elements:

  • X-axis (horizontal axis): Represents the total time within a project or sprint.
  • Y-axis (vertical axis): Represents the remaining effort needed to complete the project or sprint goal.
  • Actual work remaining bars: Work or effort remaining in a project or sprint.
  • Ideal work remaining line: If your bars are below this black line, your team is on track to finish on time.

Create a burndown chart

  1. Open the sheet from which you want to create your burndown chart.
  2. On the right pane, select Work Insights  Work Insights button
  3. Select +Add insight.
  4. Select Burndown Chart.
Create burndown chart
  1. Select the column from your sheet that you use to track effort. The column must be a number column. This could be story points, hours, or budget.
  2. Select the criteria from your sheet that you use to track completed items. This could be a Status or Stage column where you mark projects as Done.
  3. Select the column you use to identify the sprint, project, or budget timeframe.
  4. Select the sprint or project you want to visualize in the burndown as well as its corresponding start and end dates.