Agile sprints & burndown
Agile sprints & burndown
For projects using the Agile methodology, the project detail header gains two extra buttons: Sprints and Backlog. Together they let you plan iterations, drag items in and out of sprints, and watch the burndown chart in real time.
Creating a sprint
Go to /projects/{id}/sprints and click + New sprint. Fill in:
- Name — auto-generated as "Sprint N" where N is the next number; rename freely (e.g. "Sprint 5: Onboarding revamp").
- Goal — short summary of what shipping looks like.
- Start date / End date — auto-prefilled from your last sprint: the new sprint starts the day after the previous one ends, and matches its length. So if the last sprint was 14 days, the new one defaults to a 14-day window starting where the old one left off. If there are no prior sprints, defaults to today + 13 days (a 2-week sprint).
Override either field freely — the prefill is just a starting point.
Save. Sprints start in Planning state. Click Start sprint when you're ready to lock the scope; click Complete sprint when finished.
At most one sprint per project can be Active at a time. Starting a new active sprint auto-completes any other active sprint in the same project, in one transaction.
The sprint list
/projects/{id}/sprints shows summary cards (Active / Planning / Completed / items in the active sprint) and one card per sprint. Each card shows:
- Status badge
- Start → end date range
- Goal
- Item count, Done count, Story points, Likely-hours rollup
- Actions — Edit, Start, Complete, Delete
The backlog
/projects/{id}/backlog is your planning surface — three sections:
- Active sprint(s) at the top
- Planning sprints in the middle
- Backlog (un-sprinted items) at the bottom
Drag items between sections to plan or re-plan. Each section header rolls up the item count, story-point total, and likely-hour total so you see capacity at a glance.
The burndown chart
Per-sprint detail page at /projects/{id}/sprints/{sprintId} shows the burndown: an inline-SVG chart of remaining work per day across the sprint timeline.
- Y-axis — remaining hours (or points; toggle at the top)
- X-axis — days from start to
min(today, end) - Ideal line — green dashed diagonal from total → 0
- Actual line — stepped polyline + per-day dots
- Today guide — vertical dashed line (only when the sprint is in flight)
A 30-day sprint with 280 hours of work appears as the green ideal sloping down to zero across 30 days; the actual line tracks how the team is doing.
Honest scope changes
The chart is honest about scope changes mid-sprint. If you add a 16-hour story on day 5, the actual line jumps up by 16 on day 5 — not retroactively inflating day 1. If you remove an item, the line drops on the day it left.
This is powered by a membership history table: every time a work item joins or leaves a sprint, a row records when it happened and the item's estimate at the time. The chart sums those snapshots day-by-day to compute "what was in scope at end-of-day D?".
Estimate edits don't reshape history
Editing an item's PERT estimate later doesn't change past days on the chart. The membership row carries the estimate snapshot from when the item joined; subsequent edits affect only future renders. That's the standard burndown contract — scope changes are visible, estimate edits aren't.
Velocity
Once you've completed a few sprints, the rollups across them give you a velocity baseline (story points or hours per sprint). The current UI shows per-sprint rollups; an aggregate "average velocity" view is a future enhancement.