How to Create a Scrum Burn-Down Chart in Standard Time

Scrum burndown charts, or project history charts, as they are called in Standard Time help managers see the time remaining for projects in a line chart.  An example is shown below.  As many know, Standard Time is more than a timesheet.  It contains many project management features like task linking, resource allocation, earned value analysis, utilization percentages and rates.  These can be pretty boring topics unless you need to know where your project is headed.  And then they become pretty valuable tools all of a sudden.  Let’s take a look at the scrum chart.

 

Notice the falling line chart.  We’ll explain that shortly.

 

Scrum Burndown
Scrum Chart in Standard Time

The first step to creating this chart is to turn on project history.  Choose Tools, Projects and click a project to begin.  The project properties will display in the right-hand property panel.  Check the “Save task history” checkbox, as shown below.  This forces Standard Time to save time remaining for each project task when hours are entered into the timesheet.  Hours remaining are the raw ingredients for the scrum burndown chart above.

 


Save Task History in Standard Time
For Burn-down Chart

 

After turning on the “Save task history” option, now you’ll simply create project tasks and log time to them.  The image below shows a sample list of tasks.  Just remember that each task has a “Remaining” number of hours.  Those hours are plotted on a line graph in the scrum chart.  All tasks are combined to give a snapshot status of your project.  As you log daily time, those hours will fall, until they all reach zero.  Then the project is done!  You’ll see this gradual fall in the burndown chart.  Each week, you’ll notice trends developing.  Hopefully, going toward zero and completion.

 


Project Tasks in Standard Time

 

–newshirt