Scrum burnup chart

Key features of Scrum burnup chart

Scrum burnup chart helps with tracking progress, forecasting completion dates, managing scope changes, and identifying delivery risks early.

You can select one or multiple board forecasting, customize forecast scenarios (target dates, velocities), and get advanced precision tuning by adjusting history data. You can also simulate scope growth, set custom remaining work values, and add target date lines for better planning.

Unlike Jira’s native burnup report, which only tracks single-sprint progress with minimal customization, our Agile Burnup Burndown Charts gadget delivers powerful, flexible forecasting tailored to real-world Scrum and scaled agile needs.

How different roles use Burnup chart in Scrum

✅ Product or Delivery Manager: I rely on Scrum burnup charts to get realistic delivery forecasts based on team velocity. Using multi-board forecasts, custom scenarios, and scope growth simulations, I can align stakeholder expectations, prioritize work effectively, and spot delivery risks early to keep projects on track.

✅ Marketing Manager: I use a Scrum burnup chart to understand which features will likely be ready by fixed deadlines. This helps me plan campaigns and coordinate messaging better, adapting timelines proactively when delivery risks appear.

✅ Scrum Master: I closely monitor remaining work to catch scope creep and shifting commitments. When forecasts change, it signals risks that prompt me to have conversations with product owners, helping the team stay focused and manage scope.

✅ Program Manager: In large, scaled agile environments, I track progress across multiple teams and projects with burnup charts on a unified dashboard. This helps me coordinate deliveries, manage dependencies, and ensure alignment across the organisation.

✅ Release Train Engineer: I use Scrum burnup to track progress across multiple Agile Release Train (ART) teams, aggregating their velocities to forecast Program Increment (PI) delivery accurately. These charts help me identify risks, manage cross-team dependencies, and ensure alignment with PI Objectives and milestones.

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1. Key feature: Work completion forecast

Based on the team’s historical sprint velocity, the burnup report automatically calculates three forecast lines:

• Minimum velocity – the most conservative estimate
• Maximum velocity – the fastest possible pace
• Average velocity – realistic projection

These dynamic lines help to visualize when the remaining work is likely to be completed under different settings, just like in our Scrum Burndown Chart.

⚙️ Default settings:

• Interval - last 6 sprints
• Grouping - by sprint
• Estimation - in story points

2. Key feature: Multiple boards forecasting & customisation

With multi-board selection, you can combine several Scrum boards (1️⃣) into a single forecast view. Instantly see total scope, remaining work, and completed work progress (2️⃣) across multiple teams - perfect for cross-team coordination or high-level delivery planning.

For deeper customization, each board supports:

• 🧩 Custom sprint filter (1️⃣)
• ✅ Custom “Done” status (2️⃣)
• 📐 Custom estimation field (3️⃣)

This gives full flexibility to adapt forecasts to the unique workflow of each team, whether they estimate in story points, time, or any other numeric field.

3. Key feature: Custom forecast scenarios

Sometimes historical velocity alone isn't enough, especially when you're working toward fixed deadlines. That’s where custom forecast scenarios in the Scrum burnup chart gadget come in.

This feature allows you to manually define:

• 📅 A target delivery date (1️⃣) – and the system will calculate the velocity needed to hit that goal;
• ⚡ A custom velocity value (2️⃣) – and the system will show the projected completion date based on that input.

This is particularly useful when:

• You need to assess whether a specific deadline is realistic.
• You're planning work for new or evolving teams without stable velocity data.
• You're exploring what-if scenarios (e.g., what happens if velocity improves or drops).

Instead of just viewing a forecast, you can actively experiment, model, and plan more strategically, helping teams and stakeholders align around data-informed expectations.

4. Key feature: Forecast precision optimization

The reliability of any forecast depends on the quality and relevance of the data behind it. That’s why these settings give you the ability to fine-tune how your forecast is calculated:

🧮 Control the Sprint History

By adjusting the Sprint Count field along with the date range dropdown, you can define how many past sprints to include when calculating min, max, and average velocities. Including more historical data helps smooth out anomalies and gives you a more statistically stable forecast, especially for mature teams with consistent performance over time.

⚖️ Forecast input refinement

Using the advanced Issue filter and Custom sprint filter for each board you can:

• Exclude sprints that contain specific issues related to holidays, onboarding, or downtime (through sprint filtering 1️⃣)
• Focus on specific issue types, epics, or releases to tailor the dataset to relevant work only (2️⃣)

This level of Scrum burnup chart control helps you avoid misleading forecasts and instead base your planning on the most realistic and relevant historical patterns.

5. Key feature: Ability to simulate remaining work growth

In addition to setting custom forecast scenarios on the Scrum burnup chart, you can also model how changes in remaining work impact delivery timelines. This feature allows you to simulate scope growth over time to better reflect real-world project dynamics.

You can have three modes under the remaining work growth field:

• No scope change (default, 0) – keeps remaining work static throughout the forecast.
• Custom growth value – you can manually define how much scope increases per sprint.
• Historical growth-based forecast (no value entered) – the system automatically calculates scope changes based on trends from a selected period.

This feature on the Scrum burnup graph in Jira dashboard can help you understand the impact of evolving requirements, scope creep, or backlog additions, so you can stress-test your forecast and make more informed planning decisions.

Additional features of Scrum burnup chart

1. Custom remaining work value

While the remaining work in the Scrum burnup report is automatically calculated based on the current backlog and progress, you can manually adjust this value to see how different values affect the delivery timeline.

This is useful when:

• You anticipate scope changes that are not yet reflected in the backlog;
• You want to model the impact of potential task additions or removals;
• You need to validate planning assumptions before official backlog updates;
• You want to perform what-if analyses to prepare for uncertainties.

By experimenting with custom remaining work values, you can gain deeper insight into how scope fluctuations influence delivery dates.

2. Target line for key dates or milestones

You can add a target line on the Scrum burnup chart, for example, to mark the desired completion date you’re aiming for. This visual benchmark can help teams and stakeholders instantly see how current progress and forecasts align with key deadlines.

3. Deep dive into data

Want to understand exactly what data drives your Burnup chart in Scrum? Easily verify and explore detailed issue lists, breakdowns by boards, projects, statuses, etc.

By clicking on any sprint interval, you can access comprehensive tables showing:

• Issues included in that period (1️⃣)
• Completed work details (2️⃣)
• Scope change (3️⃣)

In the Scrum burnup report in Jira dashboard, you can customize what appears in these tables and how it’s displayed, selecting which columns to show (4️⃣) and how to show the information (breakdown) (5️⃣). This flexible system gives you full transparency and control over the underlying data, empowering better analysis and informed decision-making.

Plus, you can click on the forecast chart area to instantly view the list of issues of remaining work behind the forecast, making it easy to drill down whenever you need more detail.

Using other breakdown options, you can examine your backlog health from various angles.

What about native Scrum burnup chart in Jira

Jira does not offer a built-in Scrum burnup chart with the advanced functionality needed for effective Scrum forecasting. This report is not available as a widget on the Jira Dashboard, limiting visibility and accessibility for teams.

The native Jira Scrum burnup report only shows progress for a single sprint at a time and lacks any forecasting capabilities beyond basic lines for completed work, work scope, guideline line, and simple scope projection. There is no flexibility to customize remaining work forecasts, adjust velocities, or filter and combine multiple intervals or boards.

In contrast, our solution offers extensive customization, multi-board support, detailed issue breakdowns, and powerful scenario modeling.

Advantages of using Scrum burnup graph for Jira dashboard

• Forecast and track progress across single or multiple Scrum boards for comprehensive, cross-team delivery planning.
• Velocity-based forecast lines (min, max, average) provide realistic and actionable completion projections.
• Multi-board aggregation enables effective coordination and setting of global timelines across teams.
• Custom forecast scenarios empower strategic planning by modeling deadlines and velocity variations.
• Simulate scope growth and adjust remaining work values to reflect evolving project dynamics accurately.
• Focus only on relevant work, using issue and sprint filters to build forecast with precision and reliability
• Clickable sprint intervals offer detailed issue breakdowns, improving data transparency and informed decision-making.
• Supports Product Managers, Scrum Masters, and Program Leads in managing scope, mitigating risks, and aligning plans.

Apps used in this Scrum burnup chart example

Use these examples to recreate similar use cases on your Jira Dashboard.

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

Agile Burnup Burndown Charts Agile Reports and Gadgets

The Agile Reports and Gadgets app includes "Scrum burnup chart" functionality, along with many other reports and charts.