Bunrdown without weekends

[cnd]

Hi,
I’m successfully using iceScrum for many yeras meanwhile but now I’m puzzled by the sprint burndown curve.
AFAIR it was different (better from my point of view) with older versions of iceScrum. Now I’m using v7.42.

Now the X-axis of the burndown does always contain the weekends, regardless the project/planning settings.
E.g. it always shows a tick for the 11th of Jan 2020 or the 19th of Jan 2020.
a) If I select the project/planning settings to “don’t show weekends” (the text is actually “Wochenenden nicht in Diagrammen anzeigen”) then the median is kind of stairway. What does this mean?
b) If I uncheck this option (weekends are shown) the median is a straight line.

My interpretation of b) is that the team is working all days (incl. Sat, Sun), so the ideal burndown (median) is a straight line. Ok.

But in case a) I’d also expect a straight line but no weekend days shown in the X-axis.

In other words, I’d always expect a straight line as median since I’m only interested in the days when the team is working.
And over the sprint the median should be a straight line for these days.

I’m not very interested in case b) Weekends may appear as stairway-like curve or not.
But I like to see only the working days with a straight line as median.
But I have no idea how to read current display (case a, V7.42)

Regards

[Nicolas Noullet]

Hi,

The current behavior can be observed since the release of iceScrum 7.

This is a functional regression due to technical issues. When defining the UI for iceScrum 7, we picked a library to render charts that has one important drawback: it works well only for a linear x axis so it can’t skip days. As a result, weekend days cannot be removed. We made a trade-off as this library offer many other interesting features.

The option “hide weekends” is still there because it is used in other places (availabilities), and we decided to use it to adapt the ideal line as well.

The median / ideal line is here to show the ideal case. If teams are not expected to work the weekends then the line should be flat as no progress is expected to be done. A benefit is that when you see flats in the actual curve and they match the ideal line flats, then they can be safely ignored, while flats in your curve in other places means that there is probably a problem.

There is another way to understand where do these flats come from, with a little imagination. Imagine the former behavior with the option enabled, then “cut” the diagram where the weekends should be, then “spread” the diagram to insert the weekends without touching the diagram, and you will see the flats appear.

[cnd]

Thank you very much for explanation.

Now after I know that “hide weekends” doesn’t mean (anymore) that weekends are hidden in the burndown, I understand the line.
Still, if I don’t hide weekends, the line is straight, which means it is expected that the team will work on weekends.
So I summarize my understanding:
1. the burndown always includes weekend days (x-axis)
2. “hide weekends” means: “team is not expected to work on weekends” -> ideal line shows flats
3. don’t “hide weekends” means: “team is expected to work on weekends” -> ideal line doesn’t show flats
Right?

BTW, I cannot exactly see the benefit you explained “A benefit is …, while flats in your curve in other places means that there is probably a problem” since in the past a flat in the burndown always indicated a possible problem. Well, now I know again how to read it in icescrum.

[Nicolas Noullet]

You are right! We should rename the option to better reflect the current behavior.

Regarding the benefit you quote, I did not mean a benefit as compared to the former behavior, but I rather meant that in the current version where weekends cannot be removed, there is a benefit of having the ideal line adapting to weekends rather than not.

[Author]

Posts