Initiative burndown chart

Key features of Initiative burndown chart

The Initiative burndown chart gives a program-level view of delivery, focusing on the trend of remaining work as the initiative moves toward completion. By selecting the child issues of specific Jira epics as your data source, you can track total scope, completed work, and remaining work across multiple teams and boards in one view. 

Built-in forecasting tools provide delivery dates for various scenarios, and flexible filtering lets you focus on the most relevant work, drill into past performance, and visualize milestones directly on the chart.

The Initiative burndown chart is available in the Agile Burnup Burndown Charts app. You can add it to your Jira dashboard (just like any other Broken Build gadget) and customize it with a range of filters and breakdown options to match your team’s workflow.

How different roles use Initiative burndown chart

✅ Release Train Engineer (RTE): I use the Burndown chart for initiative to coordinate delivery across several Agile Release Trains, quickly spotting when one train’s delays could impact another’s ability to meet shared PI commitments.

✅ Solution Train Engineer (STE): I get a consolidated view of work from multiple ARTs contributing to a single solution, making it easier to manage large-scale dependencies.

✅ Portfolio Manager: I evaluate the progress of initiatives against business outcomes, using forecast data to adjust funding and capacity allocation where it’s most needed.

✅ Epic Owner: I focus on the initiatives my epics feed into, checking that delivery pace matches the business case and proposing scope adjustments if forecasts slip.

Keep initiatives on track with the INITIATIVE BURNDOWN CHART

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1. Key feature: Initiative-level progress tracking

✅ When to use it:

• Monitoring delivery status for multiple related epics that make up a strategic initiative.
• Providing leadership with a single, high-level view of initiative progress.
• Spotting delivery risks early when the remaining work is high compared to the forecasted completion.

2. Key feature: Delivery forecasts for various scenarios

The chart automatically calculates three forecasts based on your team’s fastest, average, and slowest historical velocities for the selected time interval, giving you optimistic, realistic, and conservative delivery dates.

✅ When to use it:

• Comparing best-, worst-, and most-likely completion dates to set realistic expectations.
• Building contingency plans for potential slowdowns or capacity changes.
• Communicating a range of possible outcomes to stakeholders during planning sessions.

3. Key feature: Delivery changes simulation

Beyond automatic forecasts, the Initiative burndown chart lets you test hypothetical delivery conditions. You can set a custom remaining work value (1️⃣), model potential scope increases (2️⃣), or filter remaining issues with JQL (3️⃣):

You can also change the target velocity to see how it shifts the completion date (1️⃣), set a fixed deadline to calculate the delivery pace required to meet it (2️⃣), apply a velocity percentile from historical data for more optimistic or conservative projections (3️⃣), or run a Monte Carlo simulation to view the probability of completing the work by different dates (4️⃣).

✅ When to use it:

• Preparing contingency plans for different scopes or capacity scenarios.
• Testing how delivery timelines change if the scope grows mid-initiative.
• Exploring whether accelerating the work pace could bring key deadlines forward.

4. Key feature: Defining and filtering the scope

Filter the results by issue type (1️⃣), release (2️⃣), or with custom JQL (3️⃣). It’s also possible to choose relevant Done statuses (4️⃣) and the estimation field (5️⃣) to match your team’s workflow.

✅ When to use it:

• Focusing on the subset of work most relevant to the initiative’s objectives.
• Ensuring progress tracking reflects the team’s actual definition of “done.”
• Comparing delivery metrics across different releases or work types.

5. Key feature: Drill down into past performance

Click on any interval in the chart to inspect the work completed during that period and see how the scope has changed over time. You can also click within the forecast zone to view detailed statistics on remaining work, helping you understand exactly what’s left to deliver.

✅ When to use it:

• Identifying periods where the delivery pace accelerated or slowed down.
• Understanding how scope changes have impacted timelines.
• Pinpointing the specific work remaining to achieve initiative completion.

Additional features: Milestones and deadlines visualization

Add one or more target dates directly to the chart to see how forecasted completion lines up with critical milestones, release trains, or PI objectives. 

✅ When to use it:

• Checking whether the current progress supports the upcoming PI or release goals.
• Prioritizing work when several deadlines are approaching.
• Highlighting delivery risks early in stakeholder reviews.

What about the native Jira Initiative burndown chart

Jira does not offer a native Burndown chart at the initiative level. The highest level supported in standard Jira reports is usually the epic. This means there’s no built-in way to see combined progress, remaining work, or forecasts for multiple epics contributing to a strategic initiative.

As a result, teams tracking initiatives in Jira often face these challenges:

❌ No single chart that aggregates work from several epics.

❌ No initiative-level forecasts or “what-if” scenario modeling.

❌ No ability to customize the forecast basis or align Done statuses and estimation fields with your workflow.

❌ No ability to visualize milestones against initiative completion.

❌ No initiative-level gadget for Jira dashboards.

Advantages of using the Initiative burndown chart

• Track progress for multiple epics that contribute to the same initiative in a single view.
• Compare optimistic, realistic, and conservative forecasts to set realistic delivery expectations.
• Model “what-if” scenarios for scope growth, reduced capacity, or accelerated delivery.
• Filter by issue type, release, label, Done status, or assignee to zero in on the most relevant work.
• Identify delivery slowdowns or scope creep before they threaten milestones.
• Overlay deadlines or PI objectives directly on the chart for easy stakeholder alignment.
• Drill down into specific time periods to see exactly what was delivered and how the scope evolved.
• Export to CSV, PNG, or PDF for reporting or further analysis.

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Apps used in this Initiative burndown chart example

Use these examples to build your own Initiative burndown chart use cases on the Jira Dashboard.

Both Jira apps (plugins) shown 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 offers Initiative Burndown functionality plus a wide variety of additional charts and reports.

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