Cross-team burndown chart

Key features of Cross-team burndown chart

A Cross-team burndown chart makes remaining work visible, highlights completion trends, and helps teams forecast project completion confidently, whether you're tracking one or several cross-functional teams across multiple projects.

Unlike conventional BI dashboards that depend on scheduled data imports, the Agile Burnup Burndown Charts gadget provides real-time visualizations that instantly reflect the latest updates from Jira.

The Cross-team burndown chart automatically generates forecasts based on your teams' historical minimum, average, and maximum burn rate (throughput in case you use issue count), while clearly showing how scope changes impact the remaining work trajectory:

How different roles use a Multi-team burndown chart

✅ Product manager: I need a realistic view of completion timelines across multiple teams. Jira сross-team burndown graph gives me accurate forecasts based on actual combined burn rates and lets me run what-if scenarios to evaluate different delivery options. It helps me identify when scope increases are pushing out deadlines, align expectations with stakeholders, and make informed decisions about scope reduction when the remaining work isn't trending toward our target.

✅ Delivery Manager: I need to properly plan the following sprints without overkill of adding too much extra work. I used Jira reports before, but it doesn't allow me to view data across multiple boards nor apply custom scenarios. Jira сross-team burndown report lets me see how fast work was completed before and see the forecast based on previous sprints or custom scenarios. And the remaining work growth feature allows me to plan the scope for the following sprints properly.

✅ Tech Lead: I have three teams working on separate projects, but having common code bases. I use a сross-team burndown graph in Jira to schedule maintenance of our code base between my teams and keep minimal tech debt without affecting our Sprint goals.

Confidently track and forecast across teams with the CROSS-TEAM BURNDOWN CHART

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1. Key feature: Sprint grouping

Multiple teams can have separate sprints with different start/end dates. We have a sprint grouping feature that allows us to combine multiple sprints across one or multiple boards into a single interval:

• as parallel (with customizable day gap) - sprints are grouped by start or end date (configurable)
• monthly
• quarterly

Here is a report showing multiple teams in one burndown:

2. Key feature: Advanced forecast scenarios

The сross-team burndown graph features 3 standard forecast scenarios: min, average, and max. You can configure a wide range of advanced scenarios with the following features:

• What-if velocity - you can see how much work the teams will deliver if total team velocity is equal to the value you specify;
• What-if date - “how teams should perform to complete the current scope by the following date?”;
• Velocity percentile - measure performance by historical velocity defined by a specific percentile;
• Monte Carlo simulation - use historical data to simulate realistic velocity changes using advanced Monte Carlo algorithms.

3. Key feature: Advanced settings for forecast calculation

Often, forecasts are not linear: scope grows, backlog contains unrelated tasks, and teams work on multiple scopes. We featured a range of settings to address these problems:

Let’s break down all these settings and their use cases:

1. Sprint count - how many Sprints are used for automatic velocity calculation.

💡 Use case: This is useful for teams to understand their velocity over multiple Sprints.

2. Sprint length - how many days per Sprint should forecast use; can be useful when team changes the sprint size.

💡 Use case: Helps in adjusting forecasts based on varying Sprint durations.

3. Remaining work - see forecast assuming custom fixed remaining work; useful for quick-checking specific scenarios.

💡 Use case: Allows teams to evaluate progress against a set amount of work remaining.

4. Remaining work growth - increase remaining work by a fixed value for every future sprint during calculation; use case - simulate an always-growing backlog.

💡 Use case: Ideal for planning when expecting continuous backlog growth.

5. Remaining work JQL filter - apply custom JQL condition to remaining work scope; example - exclude deprecated issues from backlog, create a forecast for specific Epics or Versions, and so on.

💡 Use case: Enables focused forecasting by filtering out irrelevant issues.

6. Forecast start date (after burnup/today) - when the forecast should start; useful when observing historical data/planning custom ad-hoc missions.

💡 Use case:  Assists in planning based on historical data or specific project timelines.

7. Capacity allocation coefficient - how much historical velocity should be used for calculating future forecast; use-case - forecasting limited scopes, allocating parts of a team.

💡 Use case: This tool is helpful for teams that need to allocate resources efficiently based on past performance.

8. Hide value labels from the chart.

💡 Use case: Enhances visual clarity for presentations or reports where detailed values are unnecessary.

4. Key feature: Visual deadlines with target lines

Add precise target lines with specific dates to your Cross-team burndown chart in Jira to clearly see if you’re on schedule, ahead, or falling behind:

In the сross-team burndown report example above, we show two custom target lines. You can add as many target lines as you need.

✅ How the “Target lines” feature benefits your team:

• Displaying key delivery deadlines directly on the chart gadget in your Jira dashboard, ensuring the team always knows the target dates
• Keeping team efforts aligned with fixed milestones or planned release timelines
• Monitoring progress toward goals at a glance to see if you’re on schedule, ahead, or behind
• Minimizing uncertainty in long-term planning by tying forecasts to specific timeframes

5. Key feature: Compact view

Sometimes a сross-team burndown chart in Jira may be used with large scopes, planning may spread across a very large date period, rendering the chart shows a large horizontal scope in a small window. To address this issue, we have the Compact view feature:

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As you see, the compact view focuses on the main area of the chart by limiting the scope we see on the screen. This makes the chart more readable without losing the ability to see the whole scope.

Additional features: Detailed breakdowns & smart filtering

Gain richer insights using breakdown views and advanced filters. Select any chart segment - past (completed) or upcoming (future) - and dive into specific performance metrics.

• For completed sprints, the chart shows detailed data on finished work.
• For future sprints, you’ll see forecasts for the remaining workload.

In this example, we’ll focus on the features available for completed sprints.

The cross-team burndown chart example above highlights the following elements:

• Work breakdown (1️⃣) - review completed work for the selected sprint by issue type and priority. See the total number of issues, the percentage each type contributes, and how these values have changed since the previous interval (trend). Switch to other breakdown options beyond type and priority as needed.
• Issue list (2️⃣) -  explore completed issues with default key details (issue key, summary, count) and add extra fields if required (e.g., assignee, status). Sort by columns and instantly filter the list by clicking on values in the work breakdown.

• Issue filter (3️⃣) - fine-tune your view with toggles for parent/sub-tasks, filters by epics or releases, or automatically validated custom JQL queries.

These capabilities help Scrum teams maintain control over delivery by transforming raw scope data into clear, actionable insights.

What about the native Jira Cross-team burndown chart

Native Jira reports offer a so-called “Burndown Chart”, but it only allows tracking progress in the scope of a single sprint and misses a lot of features we offer:

• Forecasting
• Target lines
• Breakdowns
• Total work line
• Time tracking estimation

With our Jira gadget for cross-team burndown, you can:

• Add a chart to any of your Jira dashboards
• Use single or multiple Scrum boards with or without parallel sprints, grouping them the way you need
• Use a bunch of scenarios to build a forecast that exactly fits your needs
• Add target lines to monitor your progress
• Set up custom settings to have a realistic forecast
• Use time tracking estimation

Advantages of using Cross-team burndown report in Jira

• Clear visibility across teams – Monitor remaining work, completion trends, and project progress for multiple cross-functional teams in one view.
• Real-time updates – Unlike static BI dashboards, data refreshes instantly with the latest Jira changes.
• Advanced forecasting – Leverage minimum, average, and maximum burn rates, “what-if” scenarios, and Monte Carlo simulations for accurate delivery predictions.
• Sprint grouping flexibility – Combine sprints from multiple boards and group them by parallel, monthly, or quarterly intervals.
• Visual target lines – Add deadlines directly to charts, track progress toward milestones, and reduce uncertainty in planning.
• Detailed breakdowns – Analyze completed and remaining work by issue type, priority, or other breakdown options.
• Comprehensive issue lists – View, sort, and filter completed issues with key details and optional custom fields.
• Smart filtering – Use toggles for parent/sub-tasks, epic/release filters, or custom JQL for precise scope control.
• Compact view option – Focus on the main chart area for better readability while retaining full scope context.
• Customizable forecast settings – Adjust sprint count, length, backlog growth, start date, and capacity allocation for tailored planning.
• Supports both completed and future sprints – Review past performance and forecast upcoming work with equal detail.

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Apps used in this Cross-team burndown chart example

Use these examples to create your own use cases right on the Jira Dashboard.

Both Jira apps (plugins) featured here come with a 30-day free trial and are completely free for teams of up to 10 users:

Agile Burnup Burndown Charts Agile Reports and Gadgets

The Agile Reports and Gadgets app includes Cross-team burndown chart capabilities along with many other powerful reports and charts.

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