Applied project management#9 A burndown chart for everything

A burn down chart is a simple yet very effective tool to track and proactively manage the progress of a project towards a milestone. It is analogous to landing a flight within the runway. When we approach the destination, the pilot announces the current altitude of the plane, the distance to the runway and the tentative time required to reach the destination. In this case, what goes on to the 'Y' axis is the altitude, and 'X' axis represents the distance to the destination. For projects, the 'Y' axis has the cumulative estimated effort to complete the balance tasks, and the the 'X' axis represents the duration of the sprint / milestone / release / project. When we use a burn down chart to track the progress of the sprint then we call it as a sprint burn down chart. If it is used to track the progress towards a major release of the product, then it is called 'Release burn down chart'. I use it to track the progress of my training programs, and I call it as the 'Training burn down chart'.

Here are two videos. The first video discusses the purpose of burn down charts. The second video discusses about updating the burn down chart daily.

Video#1

Video#2