Sprint burndown
A sprint burndown chart shows remaining work in a sprint over time — typically Y-axis is story points or hours, X-axis is sprint day. The ideal line is a straight diagonal from sprint start to sprint end; deviations from the line indicate scope or pace issues.
Burndowns are popular but limited: they look healthy in scenarios where the work is actually unhealthy (large stories closed at end of sprint hide a pile of stuck work). Better paired with cumulative-flow diagrams (which show WIP over time) and cycle-time histograms (which show how long stories actually take). Stride's Plan module shows all three side by side so teams diagnose what burndown alone hides.
Long-form posts that explore sprint burndown in depth — when to use it, common failure modes, how AI helps.
Related terms
- Velocity
A team's velocity is the average number of story points completed per sprint over a rolling window (typically the last 3-6 sprints).
- Capacity planning
Capacity planning is the practice of estimating how much work a team can realistically take on in a sprint, accounting for PTO, meetings, on-call duty, and other non-coding time.
- Throughput
Throughput is the count of work items completed per unit of time (typically per week or per sprint).