Burndown and Burnup Charts

In addition to the earned value charts that have been added to the baseline, there are two more charts available now to help project managers track the progress of their projects.  These other charts are the Burndown and Burnup charts.  Like the earned value charts, they can also be accessed by from the ‘Baseline‘ section of a project by clicking on the hyperlinked name of the baseline.

The burndown chart shows the project manager how much work still needs to be done to complete the project.

The Burnup chart uses the same data to show the project manager how much work has already been completed.  It compares this amount of effort that has already been spent with total amount of time that is expected to be spent on the project, which is calculated by adding the remaining planned effort to the effort that has already been spent on the project.

These charts have been added because they are often used in agile software development projects with methodologies such as Scrum.