Release burndown chart

…product development in an agile context, e.g. using scrum or kanban.

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You want to keep track of your release planning and manage expectations accordingly.

Having a release burndown chart, updated at the end of each sprint, implies:

having a clear product vision;
having a good overview of the product as a whole (the whole elephant), providing the needed context for the fine grained user stories that development is working on;
having a clear distinction in priority order and value creation (necessity, flexibility, intelligence, luxury); and, based on that:
having clear mid term product goals and planning.

From a ‘fractal’ point of view, the release burndown chart is simply one level of scale higher than the sprint burndown chart.

All in all, having a release burndown chart gives more “zin” (direction, meaning, utility, lust).

Therefore:

Create and maintain a chart that tracks the burndown of story points at the end of each sprint. Use it to govern the product development process.

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