To calculate the values, add up the initial estimate for each task and divide that sum by the number of days/weeks/months. Planned Hours: This represents the weekly hours allocated to the project. Now, let’s go over the second table more in detail so that you can easily customize your burndown chart. The two tables have to be kept separated to gain more control over the horizontal data label values (more on that later). Chart Inputs: This table will make up the backbone of the chart.Original Data: Pretty self-explanatory-this is the actual data accumulated over the eight weeks.Take a quick look at the dataset for the chart:
Well, life is not a Disney movie, after all! What went wrong? In an effort to get to the bottom of the problem to figure out at what point things went off the rails, you set out to build a burndown chart. As a seasoned project manager, you estimated it would take 240 hours to get the work done.īut lo and behold, that didn’t work out. Before hitting the first major milestone to show the progress to the client, your team had eight weeks to roll out four core features.
In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to create this astounding burndown chart in Excel from scratch:įor illustration purposes, suppose your small IT firm has been developing a brand new budgeting app for about six months. If that sounds daunting, check out the Chart Creator Add-in, a powerful, newbie-friendly tool for creating advanced charts in Excel while barely lifting your finger. However, this chart is not supported in Excel, meaning you will have to jump through all sorts of hoops to build it yourself.
Create, Save, & Use Excel Chart Templates