Epic Burndown Report
This report is designed to monitor the progress of work across one or more Epics. It provides a visual representation of the total volume of outstanding work (i.e., the number of open issues or story points) associated with each Epic over a given period.
The report’s primary function is to show how the team is “burning down” the remaining work within selected Epics, offering a clear and immediate picture of delivery progress and scope trends.
How to Read the Chart:
Typically, you will observe two key phases in the lifecycle of an Epic on this chart:
Scope Definition (Ramp-Up): Early in the Epic’s lifecycle, the total amount of work may increase or fluctuate as stories and tasks are created and added. This phase captures the evolution of the Epic’s scope during planning and refinement.
Work Execution (Burndown): As the team completes issues by transitioning them to a “Done” or equivalent status, they are no longer counted as ‘open.’ As a result, the burndown line will decrease over time. A steady downward trend indicates that the team is making consistent progress toward completing the Epic.
The ideal trajectory shows the work trending to zero by the target completion timeframe, signaling successful delivery of the Epic.
Here’s how to configure the Epic Burndown report for Jira:
Step 1: Set up your Data Source.
Use the filter “Status was” and select all relevant open statuses.
Choose a specific date range that includes the time period for your epics.
Add a JQL Query:
"EPIC LINK" in (Epic-X, Epic-Y)Step 2: Choose the "Number of issues over time in status" metric. Make sure to select the same open statuses you used in the Data Source filter.
Step 3: Display by “Status change date” field. This field is automatically applied when using the “Number of issues over time in status” metric. Changing it may lead to inaccurate chart data.
Step 4: Group by “Epic Link” field.
Additional settings screens:
Data Source settings from our sample:
Metric settings from our sample: