Burndown Chart Excel Template

What is a Burndown chart?

A Burndown chart is a visual representation of work progress over time. It helps teams track the planned workload versus the actual completion rate, so that projects stay on track.  

The Burn Down chart typically includes planned, actual, and forecasted trends, helping to identify project progress and delays, bottlenecks, as well as deviations from the initial project plan. 

Who uses Burndown charts?

Burndown charts are widely used in project management, particularly with agile teams and scrum methodologies. These reports are graphical representations that help decision-makers understand project velocity, anticipate risks, and make informed adjustments to ensure timely project completion. 

Common users of different types of Burndown charts include (but are not limited to):  

• Project managers & scrum masters – Sprint burndown charts are used to track progress on sprint goals, identify risks, and ensure timely delivery 
• Development teams & Agile team members – Task burndown charts are used to monitor remaining tasks and manage workloads efficiently 
• Executives & senior management – Product burndown charts are used to gain high-level insights into project performance and timeline adherence 
• Business analysts & consultants – To assess project efficiency and recommend optimizations. 
• Clients & stakeholders – To get real-time updates and a transparent view of the project timelines and delivery expectations 

Benefits of using a Burndown chart

Using this burndown chart as a project management tool (or just reporting tool) can benefit you and your team in a number of ways: 

• It provides real-time project tracking – Immediate visibility into the project scope, project goals, actual progress gaps, and completed tasks 
• Helps enhance transparency – Stakeholders can see the entire project health at a glance and get real-time insights 
• Helps with early risk identification – Detect real-time project progress and delays early, so you can take corrective action and stick to the project deadline 
• Improves resource allocation – Optimize team workload and task assignments, especially useful with complex projects 
• Supports data-driven decisions – Support project planning and forecasting with actual data (which can be used for future projects) 

Common business use cases 

A Burndown chart can have a lot of use cases for agile project managers (and not only). Some of the most common ones include: 

• Agile project management & scrum project management – Real-time progress tracking on sprint progress and velocity 
• Software development – Monitoring features, bug fixes, and release cycles 
• Construction & engineering projects – Ensuring work completion aligns with deadlines and the team delivers the project on time 
• Marketing campaign execution – Tracking planned project tasks vs. actual activities 
• Product development – Managing feature backlog and iterations 

Why use Zebra BI Add-ins for Excel to Visualize a Burndown Chart?

Zebra BI for Excel enhances your Burndown chart with advanced visualization, automation, and IBCS-compliant reporting. The Zebra BI chart enables you to build a time-series analysis of planned, actual, and forecasted breakdown. Moreover, the Zebra BI Excel add-ins help you build advanced visualizations, automations, and IBCS-compliant reports.  

Here’s how our add-ins help you achieve all this: 

• Visualize Data Series Over Time – As opposed to structural comparisons, use horizontal axes to track trends effectively 
• Automatic variance calculation to highlight gaps and deviations 
• Built-in formatting and scaling – no need for complex Excel workarounds 
• Clear commentary and annotations to explain the “why” behind the data, ensuring transparency and traceability 
• IBCS-compliant charts for standardized, actionable insights 
• Out-of-the-box variance and trend analysis – no manual calculations needed 

What does this Burndown chart Excel template include?

The template incorporates best-practice visualization techniques to ensure clarity and insight: 

1. Segmented area chart

…Which helps you: 

• Visualize planned, actual, and forecasted burndown  
• Run automatic calculations of variances to highlight differences between planned and actual work 
• Show the number of remaining tasks (the difference highlight feature automatically calculates and highlights the number of remaining tasks) 
• Include comments and markers to explain deviations and provide recommendations (so your reports are complete, with all the additional information needed for a clear understanding of the report) 

2. Area Chart

…Which helps you: 

• Compare planned and actual burndown trends & highlight key differences and trends for a quick assessment 
• Run automatic calculation of variances and total completed tasks (difference highlight feature automatically calculates and highlights it) 
• Incorporate comments with markers to provide insights and recommendations. 

3. Line Chart

…Which helps you: 

• Showcase planned vs. actual burndown in a simple trend format 
• Run automatic calculation of variances and total completed tasks (difference highlight feature automatically calculates and highlights it) 
• Add comment markers to document insights and decisions 

Whether or not you are an adept of the Agile methodology and Agile environments, this Burndown chart can help you gain real-time visibility into the entire project, so you can gain insightful experience that helps you avoid potential delays and issues in the future.  

Download the Zebra BI Burndown chart template for Excel and reap all the benefits of dynamic, automated, and insightful project tracking.