Free Burndown Chart Generator
Effortlessly generate professional burndown charts for your agile sprints and track project progress with our easy-to-use online tool.
Free Burndown Chart Generator: Your Ultimate Guide to Sprint Tracking
A burndown chart generator helps Agile teams and project managers visualize progress without the hassle of manual setup. It helps create visual representations of work remaining versus time, allowing teams to track sprint progress and identify potential issues before they impact delivery.
This comprehensive guide will cover:
Creating agile burndown charts with our generator
Understanding sprint burndown chart fundamentals
How Scrum burndown chart tools improve team performance
Best practices for project burndown charts
And much more
What is a Burndown Chart Generator and Why Do You Need It?
A burndown chart generator is a specialized tool that creates visual progress tracking charts for agile projects. It automatically plots story points or tasks against time, showing both ideal work completion rates and actual progress. This free online tool quickly creates burndown charts, offering real-time visibility into team performance and workload trends.
Without burndown charts, Scrum teams would have limited visibility into sprint progress. This leads to missed deadlines, scope creep, and ineffective sprint planning. A burndown chart maker tool removes the guesswork and provides precise tracking for all agile efforts.
How Does a Burndown Chart Look?
A typical sprint burndown chart displays:
X-axis: Time (sprint days)
Y-axis: Work remaining (story points or tasks)
Ideal line: Perfect work completion rate
Actual line: Real team progress
For example:
Day 1: 20 story points remaining
Day 5: 15 story points remaining
Day 10: 5 story points remaining
Day 14: 0 story points remaining (sprint complete)
What Are Burndown Chart Parameters?
To generate an accurate and meaningful burndown chart, you need to enter a few key inputs, called burndown chart parameters. These define the scope, duration, and workload of your sprint or project. Here's a closer look at each one:
1. Project Title
This is the name or label of your sprint, milestone, or project phase. It helps identify what you’re tracking in the chart.
Example: Sprint 15 – User Dashboard
Use clear and specific titles so your team can quickly recognize what the chart represents.
2. Story Points
Story points represent the total effort required to complete all tasks in the sprint. These can be based on time (hours), complexity, or task count, depending on your team's workflow.
Example: 45 story points
Entering accurate story points is crucial, as they determine the vertical scale of your chart and how fast you're supposed to burn down work.
3. Start Date
This marks the first day of your sprint or the beginning of work on the project.
Example: March 1, 2024
Your chart will begin tracking progress from this date onward, so choose the date your team started working.
4. End Date
This is the last planned day of the sprint—the point by which all tasks should be completed.
Example: March 15, 2024
The timeline between the start and end dates defines how many working days you have to deliver the full scope.
5. Include Weekends
This setting determines whether to count weekends as part of the working days in your chart.
Option: Yes or No (checkbox)
Select Yes if your team works on weekends.
Select No if weekends should be skipped in calculating daily progress.
How to Create Burndown Charts in Our Generator
Creating sprint burndown charts is simple with our generator:
Enter Project Details: Input your sprint title, story points, start date, and end date
Configure Settings: Choose whether to include weekends in calculations
Generate Chart: Click "Print Chart" to create your visualization
Track Progress: Update daily as work is completed
How to Use Burndown Charts for Sprint Tracking
To effectively track sprints and analyze team velocity, implementing burndown charts is essential:
Daily Updates: Record completed story points each day to maintain accuracy
Trend Analysis: Monitor if actual progress follows the ideal burndown line
Issue Identification: Spot scope creep, blockers, or velocity problems early
Sprint Planning: Use historical data to improve future sprint estimates
Why Do We Need Burndown Chart Parameters?
Burndown chart parameters help agile burndown chart tools identify sprint characteristics and team performance patterns. They show which planning strategies are effective and reveal team velocity trends over time. This tracking allows assessment of sprint health and helps decide where to focus improvement efforts.
Who Uses These Burndown Chart Parameters?
Most agile teams and project management platforms use burndown chart parameters. When team members update progress with story point completion, the parameters are captured by the Scrum burndown chart tool. These tools provide reports detailing which practices, team sizes, and sprint lengths drive successful delivery.
Real-Life Examples: How Burndown Charts Work in Different Projects
Software Development Sprint vs. Marketing Campaign
Tracking a Software Development Sprint You're managing a 2-week development sprint with 30 story points. Your project burndown chart helps monitor feature completion.
Your burndown chart shows:
Start: 30 story points
Day 7: 18 story points (ahead of schedule)
Day 14: 0 story points (sprint successful)
Insights: This burndown chart reveals the team completed work faster than planned, indicating good sprint planning.
Best Practices for Using Burndown Charts Effectively
Be Consistent with Updates – Update story point completion daily to maintain accuracy
Keep Charts Visible – Display burndown charts where the team can see progress
Use Charts in Every Sprint – Track every iteration, whether it's development, testing, or deployment
Monitor Trends in Sprint Reviews – Regularly analyze burndown patterns to improve planning
Avoid Overcomplicating – Keep story point estimates simple and focus on completion trends
How to Locate Burndown Chart Data in Project Management Tools
Understanding where to find burndown chart metrics can enhance your agile project analysis and sprint tracking efforts. Let's explore how to access these insights in popular project management platforms.
Does the Order of Story Point Completion Matter?
In short, no. The sequence in which you complete story points doesn't affect burndown chart accuracy. However, completing the highest-priority items first ensures value delivery even if the sprint encounters issues.
For example:
Completing 5 points on Day 1, 3 points on Day 2
Completing 3 points on Day 1, 5 points on Day 2
Both approaches result in 8 points completed after 2 days, maintaining the same burndown trajectory.
Understanding Story Points and Their Ideal Range
When it comes to story points, there's no strict limit on complexity. However, for optimal sprint planning, it's best to keep individual stories manageable.
Why Keep Story Points Reasonable?
Predictability: Smaller story points are easier to estimate accurately
Progress Visibility: Frequent completion updates show consistent progress
Recommended Story Point Range
Aim to keep individual stories between 1-8 story points. This range allows for meaningful work chunks without becoming unmanageable.
Advanced Burndown Chart Features
Our scrum burndown chart tool offers advanced capabilities:
Scope Change Tracking: Visualize how scope additions affect sprint completion Velocity Calculations: Automatic team velocity calculations based on completed story points Trend Analysis: Historical burndown pattern analysis across multiple sprints Export Options: Download charts for presentations and stakeholder reporting
Conclusion
A burndown chart generator is essential for successful agile project management. Sprint burndown charts provide teams with critical visibility into progress, helping identify risks and maintain delivery commitments. Whether you're managing a small team or coordinating multiple Scrum teams, our free burndown chart generator online streamlines the tracking process and supports data-driven sprint management.
The agile burndown chart has become fundamental to modern project management, enabling teams to visualize progress and make informed decisions. As projects become more complex, the ability to create a burndown chart for sprint tracking becomes increasingly valuable for maintaining team velocity and stakeholder confidence.
Start using our burndown chart maker tool today to transform your sprint tracking and improve your team's delivery predictability.
FAQs About Burndown Chart Generators
1. What is a Burndown Chart?
A burndown chart is a visual tool used in Agile project management to track how much work is left in a project versus the time remaining. It helps teams stay on schedule by clearly showing progress toward completing tasks.
2. What does a Burndown Chart Generator do?
Our burndown chart generator automatically creates burndown charts based on your project’s start date, end date, and total work units (like tasks or hours). Just enter your data, and the chart updates instantly—no manual work needed.
3. Who should use this tool?
Scrum masters, project managers, Agile teams, freelancers, or anyone managing tasks over a while can use this tool to visualize and track progress effectively.
4. What’s the difference between a burndown and a burnup chart?
A burndown chart shows how much work is left. A burnup chart shows how much work has been completed. Our tool focuses on the burndown method.
5. Can I use this for non-Agile projects?
Yes. Even if you’re not following Scrum or Agile, a burndown chart helps track any type of work that’s time-bound and task-based.