Cumulative Flow based on effort/points

Question

This was brought up a couple of years ago but the thread ground to a halt.  

The Cumulative Flow Diagram lets you see the number of epics, features and stories, by status, across a timeline.

Sadly, unless all your stories are the same size, this is pretty much useless from a management point of view because it counts a 100-point backlog item as the same amount of progress as a 1-point item.

So: can I either adapt the CFD or create a new one that is based on a sum of story points?

Answer 1

We have had the same discussion in our shop.  We took our initial step towards a CFD based on Effort-Points as a 'Business Value' chart.  The charts did provide valuable data as we could watch as projects/teams delivered value.  Since then we have been using a query that gives us this chart based on effort of the epic/feature/pbi.

We are also able to monitor short-term scope changes (2 week window) based on the same query that allow management to talk with the teams on why things are changing.  Reception has been positive.

We are still working though the detail of 'place-holder' values at the feature level where the child backlog items are not sized.  Some of our features take several sprints to fully define, but we want to have some high-level sizing to justify the work.  The big jump at the start is a result of adding effort to the child pbis without reducing the feature effort.  The correction was made to the feature and the end of June.

My query for the chart above is looking at effort/state on a 7 day window.  We also have a query that summarizes by day over a two-week window for the regular product management meetings.  Daily progress is a little to fine-grained for senior management, but it does help the teams. 

Hope this helps.

Jim

Answer 2

Ok -- it didn't like the picture...  trust me, they look nice...

Answer 3

Hi Joel Teague,

You could not show effort or story points in Cumulative Flow chart.

Velocity chart shows active and completed Story Points summary of sprints.

If this chart could not meet your requirement, you could try to create custom report:

SQL Server Reporting Services Reports (TFS) or Excel Reports (TFS)

https://www.visualstudio.com/pl-pl/docs/report/overview#excel-reports-tfs

Best Regards

---

MSDN Community Support
Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" the responses that resolved your issue, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if not. This can be beneficial to other community members reading this thread. If you have any compliments or complaints to MSDN Support, feel free to contact [e-mail].