Assessing team work with progress and load bars
You can assess your team's progress for a release or an iteration by viewing progress bars. You can see completed and estimated work load for your team. You can also determine if the project is likely to be completed on time or determine whether the team is overbooked.
- If the Estimate value is the only available value, that value is used.
- If a Correction value is available, that value is used.
- If a Time Spent value is available and the work item is not resolved, that value is subtracted from the estimate or corrected estimate. If the Time Spent value is available and the work item is resolved, that value is used.
- If the Time Remaining value is set, the time spent is derived from that value to calculate the estimated time.
Team Load section
Use the Team Load section to review each team member's work load by comparing the remaining hours available in the iteration (based on the team member's work schedule, planned absences, and percentage of assignment to this timeline) with the estimated hours for completing the planned work items for the iteration. If the estimated hours exceed the available hours, the difference is displayed as overbooked hours. This section also shows the percentage of work items that have work estimates. Work items without estimates are a risk to the iteration. Hover over a team member's work load indicator and press F2 for more information.
If the Team Load section is not visible in the Team Dashboard or My Work view, click the
drop-down menu 
in the view toolbar, and then click .
- Total hours available: The number of hours between now and the end of the iteration that are available for the user to work (based on the iteration end date and the team member's work schedule, planned absences and percentage of assignment to this timeline).
- Total hours estimated: The sum of the remaining estimated hours for all tasks that are assigned to a user for an iteration.
- Overbooked by: The Total Hours Estimated minus the Total Hours Available (the amount of work in hours that exceeds the remaining work time).
- Items estimated: The number of work items that are estimated in the Estimate field.
- Quality of planning: The degree to which your work is estimated. The more work items that you estimate, the more precisely the work can be calculated. The quality is excellent if all work items are estimated, and it decreases from good to fair to poor as decreasing amounts of work items are estimated.
Load bar
In the web client, the Plan Details section of a plan shows load information, which is a
comparison of remaining work time (as defined in the work environment) and remaining estimated work.
It can help you to answer the question, Does the team have enough time to finish all work in this
iteration?
The workload information can identify if a team member is overbooked.
- Total hours estimated versus total hours available: Out of the 296 hours that are estimated, the team can support 215.5 hours.
- Hours, behind or ahead of schedule: The team’s upcoming work exceeds the remaining work time. The team is behind by 80.75 hours, resulting in the red part of the bar.
- Percentage of work items estimated: Only 50% of work items are estimated. Notice that the height of the load bar is a visual representation of the estimated work items. It is only 50% filled.
When you hover the mouse pointer over the Load bar, the Work Load report information displays in the hover help:
Work load is calculated using the same formulas as Team Load.
Progress bar
The Progress bar is also in the Plan Details section of a plan, which shows progress information
that takes into account both remaining work and any finished work. It shows the ratio of closed to
open work items. A progress bar can help you to answer the question, Considering all of the work
for this iteration, where is the team now?
If the past and the remaining work time is known, progress information can also provide a projection. It compares the ratio of closed work items to open work with the ratio of past to remaining work time. The projection assumes that you plan to work on future work with the same velocity as you worked on past work. So, if the past work time is 9 hours and you completed work that is estimated at 3 hours, the projection assumes that you need three times as much work time as estimated for the remaining work. This value is compared to the remaining work time. If it is smaller, you are ahead, if it is larger, you are behind your target.
The progress bar shows a comparison of completed and expected work hours for the team in an iteration. It also shows the percentage of work items that have estimates. The width of the progress indicator represents the full duration of the iteration.
The length of the green bar indicates the amount of work that is completed. A light-green extension indicates work that is completed ahead of plan. A red extension indicates work that is behind plan or estimated work that exceeds the remaining available hours in the iteration.
There are two progress bars:
The top bar tracks the progress of the story points in an iteration. You can see that 40 out of 73 points are complete. You can also see that 100% of the stories are estimated. When you hover the mouse pointer over the top bar, the hover help provides more information:
- Story points done: The number of story points that are complete.
- Expected story points: Estimates how many story points should be completed at this time in the iteration. It also indicates whether you are ahead or behind.
- Work hours done: The number of work item hours that are complete.
- Expected work hours: Estimates how many work item hours should be completed at this time in the iteration. It also indicates whether you are ahead or behind.
- Items estimated: The percentage of stories that are estimated.
- Items completed: The number of work items (including stories) that are complete.
The Burndown Velocity bar tracks the progress of the hours in an iteration. You can see that 48 out of 92 hours are complete, and it is estimated that the team is running ahead of schedule by 34 hours. You can also see that 83% of the work items are estimated. When you hover the mouse pointer over the Progress Report bar, the hover help provides more information:
- Work hours done: The number of work item hours that are complete.
- Expected work hours: Estimates how many work item hours should be completed at this time in the iteration. Indicates whether you are ahead or behind.
- Items estimated: The percentage of work items that are estimated.
- Items completed: The number of work items (including stories) that are complete.
Learn more about estimating work items
When you initially estimate a work item, you make a best guess of how long it will take to complete that work item. You can use the following fields to ensure accuracy of your estimates:
- Estimate: The initial estimate of a work item before thorough investigation.
- Time Remaining: The amount of time needed to complete the work item. Adjust the time remaining value as you complete the work.
- Correction: A more accurate estimate that replaces your initial estimate. When you type the new value, time is added or subtracted from the Time Remaining value.
Estimating your work items improves planning and helps your team lead manage your work. Having an initial estimate and a time remaining value allows you to track how realistic the initial estimate was. You can run reports, such as the Estimate Changes report and the Estimated vs Actual Work report for after-the-fact diagnosis of how the scope, or amount of work, for an iteration has changed. For more information about reports, see Work item reports.
Burndown report
If you use the Scrum process template, the Plan Details section includes the Burndown report. This report answers the question of how much remaining work there is in the iteration, as captured in estimated hours, and what the trajectory is for completing that work.
- Plan view: Considers estimate and corrected estimate and actual hours when calculating planned work.
- Burndown report: Considers estimate and corrected estimate when calculating planned work.
For more information about the Burndown report, see Checking project status by iteration.
- Story points done: All points from stories that are completed (
Donestatus) - Work hours done: All hours from tasks that are completed (
Donestatus). Work hours done is the sum for work hours done for each work item.- For opened work item, work hours done is a value of Time spent attribute. If Time spent attribute is not set, the work hours for this work item is 0.
- For closed work item:
- If Time spent attribute is set, then Time spent is used.
- If Time spent attribute is not set, but Correction attribute is set, then Correction attribute is used.
- If Time spent and Correction attributes are not set, then Estimate attribute is used.
- Items estimated: Open items with complexity units / open items (that is, a story with no complexity unit will lower this).
- Items completed: All items that are completed.
- Work hours done: Hours from completed items.
- Items estimated: Open items with time units set / open items (that is, a task with no time unit will lower this).
- Items completed: Number of completed items out of the total number of items.
Units of measure
Complexity units
Story points can be defined in Eclipse client:
