1- Can be used from the CLI
2- The graphic can be written / modified by the most quantity of tools possible.
3- Use a text-only format. Well, this wasn’t a requirement at first, but becames one when I find this tool

This excellent tool, found here was written by James S. Plank, at the University of Tennessee. In his own words, “Jgraph is a program that takes the description of a graph or graphs as input, and produces a postscript file on the standard output.”. This is an oversimplified description, and soon you will discover why.
Let’s get to work. In order to make a simple guide burndown chart to attach to the wall, for example, we will write a simple text file called burndown.jgr:


newgraph
newcurve 0 26 25 0 linetype solid


That’s it. This is a burndown chart that I can attach to my wall and complement with some color markers while the current sprint runs:

Burndown Chart 1

Well, that isn’t very impressive, right ? First, I will explain the parameters

Let’s add a caption for the graphic and the axes, and ajust a little the scale, so it becames really useful:


newgraph
title : Burndown Chart for project "My Project"
newcurve pts 0 26 25 0 linetype solid
xaxis size 9 label : Days
yaxis size 5 label : Story Points

This give us:

Well, it’s getting better. Now let’s add a real burndown line, and the line that represents the mean of work that have to be accomplished in the current iteration. The code is as follows:

newgraph
title : Burndown Chart for project "My Project"
newcurve pts 0 26 1 25 2 23 9 23 50 0 linetype solid
newcurve pts 0 26 50 0 linetype dotted
xaxis size 9 label : Days
yaxis size 5 label : Story Points

As you can see, we have a dotted line representing the mean work and the line that represent th actual work done in each day. Now, this is all that I need to print and attach to the wall.

Making the source file useful

We are missing the one characteritic that wil make this post useful: the ability to edit the source file with automated tools easily. For doing this, we must make some changes to our last graph file, splitting the newcurve lines like this:

newgraph
title : Burndown Chart for project "My Project"
xaxis size 9 label : Days
yaxis size 5 label : Story Points
newcurve
linetype dotted
pts 0 26
pts 50 0
newcurve
linetype solid
pts 0 26
pts 1 25
pts 2 23
pts 9 23

Note that we have splitted the lines representing the dots in the curve, and rearranged the file a little for automated edition purposes. This is a good time to explain the lines of the graph file:

• newgraph: Start a new graphic
• title: The title of the graphic, located below it
• xaxis: This keyword has two attributes now, the size in inches and the label of the axis.
• yaxis: Same as xaxis but for the vertical one
• newcurve: Start to plot a new curve in this graphic
• linetype: The type of line to plot, in this case a solid line
• pts: Each of this line represents a dot in the graphic. The dots are automatically connected with a line.

You’ll see that I’ve used two linetype keywords, one for each newcurve keyword. This means that I’ll represent the mean burndown time with a dotted line, and the real progress with a solid one. Having one dot per line allows me to edit this file using standard CLI tools. Attached to this post I’ve written a script to manipulate this file, it’s really more a proof of concept than anything else, but it can give you useful ideas.

In my case, I use Trac along with the agiletrac extension to control my process. I can write and attach a script triggered by the actual change in Trac, so the source .jgr file gets modified automatically, and the next day I just print the last version of the document again. I use two burndown charts in my wall: First, the Release burdown chart, with the sum of the agreed stories as the total and the estimated time. The second with *this* iteration burndown, showing tha ammount of work commited to do and the iteration length in the X axis.

Using the tool

If you have already intalled jgraph, go ahead. If not, download and build the source yourself or obtain a precompiled package for your OS. In my case (using Debian GNU/Linux 5.0) I just type:

root@casa:~#  aptitude install jgraph

You will also need ghostscript, a printing command that understand it or the ps2pdf tool. Use your imagination, my way to do the charts is as follow:

charlie@casa:~$ jgraph -P -L burndown.jgr | ps2pdf - burndown.pdf

I will have then the burndown.pdf file containing the plotted graphic with it’s two curves. The -L parameter makes the grapic landscape, and the -P option outputs postscript code instead of encapsulated postscript.

Conclusion

If you are like my and love the CLI, then this is the tool for your scrum burndowns. It’s a little help for your process and one trouble less for the post-standup meeting hour.

If you want more information on the use of the tool, don’t hesitate to write me. Best regards!

This will be my diary, where I’ll write all my experiences in this journey, and I hope several things more.

To begin, lets speak abot the negotiation: in order to change some of the corporative manners, your boss / managers must have a lot of confidence in you, because this looks like a big step (and indeed, it is!). In my case, the only point where the managers get a little nervous was when I say that we will not use gantt charts to track this project. The bosses then ask me some method to know what’s the project level of success, then I show them the  burndown charts and explained it’s use, then they remained calmed (for now).

I’ve promised the first demo in exactly 7 days from now. Wow. I’ve been working in this since monday, so a first iteration of 9 workable days, 2 weeks seems reasonable to me.
I’ll be using plain paper to carry out the whole system, I’ve designer myself a scrum board, the history cards and the tasks post-it (not really post-it in my case, but small square pieces of paper). On monday I’ll start using the burndown chart updated to thay day, so the managers can remain happy until the demo presentation.

That’s enough for one day, I’ll continue soon…

Carlos Jose is a Scrum implementor, and is available to help you reach the next level of agility in your company.
Carlos Jose's IT Blog