Burndown report shows different story points than other reports in Jira
Platform Notice: Server, Data Center, and Cloud By Request - This article was written for the Atlassian server and data center platforms but may also be useful for Atlassian Cloud customers. If completing instructions in this article would help you, please contact Atlassian Support and mention it.
Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Summary
The Release Burndown chart or Epic Burndown chart reports a different amount of Story points compared to the Sprint report, Epic report or Velocity chart.
How Burndown reports calculate story points
Burndown reports are calculated at a point in time instead of relating directly to sprints or issues. They take into account when issues change and are updated retrospectively.
So, if an issue is closed at a point in time, it is counted against the sprint that was active at that time in the Burndown report. This issue does not have to be directly associated with that sprint.
For example:
- An issue is associated with a Sprint (say Sprint 1) and closed as part of that Sprint
- The Burndown report will show this issue as part of Sprint 1
- Later, the issue is reopened and then re-closed
- The Burndown report will update, and this issue will be counted against the active Sprint at the time of the second closure
Demonstration of Burndown reports updating retrospectively
Here's an example sprint report for "My Sprint 1."
Example issue TEST-8 contains 15 story points, and issue TEST-9 contains 12. Both issues are completed in this sprint, so Story points burned in this sprint total 27:
Imagine we reopen TEST-8 and re-close it outside "My Sprint 1." Let's say "My Sprint 3" is the active Sprint when we close TEST-8 again.
Release burndown report:
Notice that completed Story points for "My Sprint 1" are now 12 and "My Sprint 3" are now 15. TEST-8 is linked to "My Sprint 3" instead of "My Sprint 1."
Compare Release burndown reports with Sprint reports
A Sprint report is more straightforward. It reports the issues that have been part of each sprint at any given point in time, not based on a point in time when the issue was completed.
In essence, these reports are looking at the data in the database from different perspectives, which causes them to report different numbers.
Further examples are explored in this article: Release Burndown report shows total Story Points mismatch.
There are also some bugs that we are tracking on our side that may help with understanding the current situation:
- https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWSERVER-16105 - Burndown Chart Data Corrupted By Multiple Done Transitions
- https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWSERVER-12616 - Agile Boards containing multiple active Sprints lead to inaccurate information in Release Burndown report