Some teams organize their work around sprints, selecting a group of tasks to be completed within a time frame. These times usually want to follow the progress done at any point of time. Burn down charts offer a visualization of this progress.
**Organizing a sprint**
Let's imagine a Phabricator Burndown project with hundreds of open tasks and a team that organizes bi-weekly sprints. At the beginning of the sprint, the team members follow these steps:
# Create a project for the iteration, i.e. "Phabricator Burndown 23".
# Define the start and end dates of the sprint.
# Assign the tasks committed for that sprint.
# Optionally, assign estimated effort points to each task.
This will generate a graph with an ideal work remaining line and columns for each day within the sprint. The planned [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_(software_development) | velocity ]] of the sprint could be shown as well.
The same page could include the list of tasks included in the sprint and their current status.
**During the sprint**
Team members work on their tasks, closing the as they are completed. At the end of the day, the graph is updated with new information:
* Completing tasks
* Actual remaining effort
* Actual velocity of the sprint
**At the end of the sprint**
In addition to the data described above, at the end of the sprint we will have some useful numbers:
* Difference between ideal and actual velocity.
* Difference between planned and actually completed tasks.
* Difference between estimated and actual effort points burned.
These numbers are meant to help teams planning future sprints accordingly. If Phabricator would support subprojects, then it would be useful to provide an overview comparing the results of every sprint, but we are not there yet.
**What we have**
* Possibility to create projects specific to sprints (in the future a [[ https://secure.phabricator.com/T390#21 | special type of project for sprints ]] might exist)
* Possibility to create a custom field for agile points in tasks.
* Potentially recyclable functionality and UI in [[ http://fab.wmflabs.org/maniphest/report/burn/?project=PHID-PROJ-lykw342rrq42z6t2osbf | Burnup Rate ]] and [[ https://secure.phabricator.com/fact/chart/?y1=N%3ATASK | Fact ]].
**What we miss**
* Start and end date for projects, in order to convert them in sprints.
* Limiting the charts to the dates of the sprint.
* Adding a line in the charts reflecting the ideal progress based on estimated points.
* Nice to have: adding to the charts the number of tasks completed every day.
{F154727}
Image source: [[ http://sb.wmflabs.org/t/wikidata-developers/2014-04-23/ | Wikidata Developers Team ]].
This task was originally reported at http://fab.wmflabs.org/T244 (site replaced, data is now here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T153). @Swidmann is a PHP developer active in the MediaWiki / Wikimedia community, and he is willing to work on this after syncing plans here.