Impact on Burn down, what is best practice

[H Schuyler Collins]

The factors I am asking about, Original Estimate, Logged hours/work and remaining hours.

The perfect scenario is you log hours on the work item/original estimate and the estimate was accurate so when all work is done on the item, the  logged time = the estimation and the remaining time is 0

But it happens that the work required will be more than the original estimate and this pllays out that at some point,  someone will add logged hours that exceed the original estimate and therefore the remaining hours will be zero, and there will be additional logged in the sprint for this item.

My question is what action should we take. Up to know we have said do not touch the original estimate, but  if you add hours that exceed the amount of time remaining and the task is not complete, manually change the remaining hours to reflect how much work is left at that point in time

Is that the best,recommended way to handle this scenario?

My related question is the opposite scenario, you have completed the work using less hours than the original estimate. In this case should you zero out the remaining hours or leave it at a non zero value

Thanks for you help,I really appreciate it

[M]

You do not want to change your original estimate. The intent is not to zero out the work and end perfectly on the line. If you spent more hours you want the burndown chart to reflect that. Conversely, if you completed all work with remaining hour you would want the burndown chart to reflect that as well. The idea will be to take what you learned from the previous sprint and apply it to your next sprint in order to get closer to the estimated time.

If you manipulate the data to equal out the logged time and estimate you're just making the chart look good but in reality there are areas needing improvement that will not be called out.

In short, nobody's perfect and every burndown chart won't end with 0 hours exactly. If more hours were used you should have a retrospective and figure out why so many hours were used and how can that be improved in the future. If less hours were used, what can you do to improve your estimates? Use the difference between the estimated time and actual time to improve future sprints.

[GabrielleJ]

Marc is correct and I definitely agree. Manipulating the data is losing an opportunity for improvement, in this case your estimating skills.