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Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by fbonetti on Thursday April 13, 2017 @05:56PM (#14111209)
I think you're getting at the heart of why burn down charts are so pointless. The shape changes sprint to sprint, depending on what kind of stories you take on. If the sprint is entirely high pointed stories, your chart will be mostly horizontal. If the sprint is entirely 1 pointers, the graph will look like an exponential decay.

Since the shape is always different, there's virtually zero useful information to take away from it.

Some people in this thread claimed that burn down charts are useful for finding out a team's capacity. I disagree - you don't need a chart for this. If your team has a target velocity of 30 points and routinely fails to meet it, reduce the target velocity. Likewise, if the team routinely completes all of their work well before the end of the sprint, slightly increase the target velocity.

Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by mrunkel on Friday April 14, 2017 @06:52AM (#14113686)
Exactly.

My insistence is always that what happens inside the Sprint is the concern of the development team and nobody elses.

However it's important to remember that the team itself should set their velocity in negotiation with the product owner. This shouldn't be set by some external force.

Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by sib on Friday April 14, 2017 @08:54PM (#14118688)
Agreed - that is part of my own distaste for them...