Show Feature Progress

In the spirit of “customers buy features,” consider showing the team’s progress against the planned and additional features, as in the product backlog burnup chart shown in the following figure.

This chart is from a real team. This team created a walking skeleton by working on three different feature sets. The team made progress against each feature set at its interim dates. While each feature set grew, Feature Set 3 grew more than the other two. That feature set grew faster than the team could make progress on it. Showing this chart helped the product owner discuss what should be in the roadmap for management.

In addition to the product backlog burnup, consider the Product Features chart, shown in the next figure.

This graph helps people see that the number of features grows during the project (Total features, from our initial guess at the number of features to the upper right). The team makes steady progress, shown in the burnup of the Features Complete line, from bottom left to top right. And the Features Remaining burndown from the initial guess as to the number of features down to zero reflects what the team completes and the additional features.

You may have worked on projects in the past where your stakeholders (your managers, sponsors, and/or customers) wanted to know when the project would be done. And they added features. With the product features chart, all of these people can see approximately when the project will be done and the possible effect if they add more features—especially if they don’t remove features.

Some people ask how to count the features in these two graphs. Count each feature in a feature set. If necessary, use the team’s cycle time to measure an average cycle time for each feature. No, that does not account for the different complexities in each feature. If you think you have a complex feature set, break it into more features so the team can deliver smaller parts faster.