Burn-down chart

Sprint progress and bottleneck signals day by day.

What you are looking at

The vertical axis is story points remaining. The horizontal axis is days across the sprint. The dashed gray line is the ideal burn — a straight diagonal from total points to zero. The blue line is actual remaining work. The amber dashed line is the forecast. Red dots signal danger points. Switch between four scenarios to see the patterns every Agile PM must recognise: healthy flow, flat start, scope added mid-sprint and late heroics.

What most PMs miss

A flat burn-down in the first two days feels harmless — the team is still getting started. By day three it is a structural crisis. With seven days left and forty points untouched, the team needs to burn at double the planned pace. The time to intervene is day one, not day seven. The burn-down is only useful if you read it daily and act on what it tells you.

The expert tip

On day three of every sprint, compare actual remaining to ideal. If the gap exceeds twenty percent of total points, raise it immediately — do not wait for the day five standup. You have seven days to recover on day three. You have one day to recover on day nine. The Late heroics scenario shows what happens when a team leaves it too late — delivered, but at a cost that shows up as burnout and technical debt in the next sprint.