In this instructional video Helena Liu explains the purpose and use of burn‑up and burn‑down charts, emphasizing their relevance for PMP and CAPM exam candidates. She first notes that both charts are Agile‑Scrum tools that visualize project progress, showing work completed versus work remaining. The burn‑down chart plots remaining work over time, while the burn‑up chart plots work completed (and optionally total scope) over time. Using a single project example, she demonstrates how the two charts can tell opposite stories: the burn‑down chart suggests stagnation mid‑project with a finish at the end, whereas the burn‑up chart reveals an early scope increase and later scope reduction, showing steady progress despite the apparent dip in the burn‑down view. Liu stresses the importance of accounting for scope changes when interpreting these charts to avoid misleading conclusions. She also highlights that understanding these charts is now part of the PMP/CAPM exam content. The video concludes with a call to sign up for a free 1.5‑hour course on exam preparation.
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In this video, we are going to talk about what is a burn-up chart and burn-down chart. These are important concepts that you do want to know for your upcoming PMP or CAPM exams. And if you haven't done so already, make sure you sign up for our free 1.5-hour course, which will teach you how you can obtain your PMP or CAPM certifications within the next 6 weeks. Please sign up at www.examspm.com/free. The link is also in the description below. Okay, now let's go over an overview first. Let's talk about the similar between these 2 charts first. Both the Burn Up and Burn Down charts are used to show the progress of the project. These charts are widely used in Agile and Scrum project management, and they have recently been incorporated into the PMP exam as well. Both of these charts will show you how much of the project you have completed right now and how much you have left to do. The difference between them is that the Burn Up chart shows you how much work has already been completed, while the burndown chart shows you how much work is remaining to be completed. So as we're looking at this chart here, on the left-hand side we have the burndown chart, and we can see how much work we have already completed to show us how much work we have remaining. Whereas on the flip side, the burnup chart shows you how much work we have done, and it shows us how much work we still have to do. In order to complete the project. So this is the Burn Up and Burn Down chart for the same project. In the Burn Down chart, it appears that the team did not accomplish much in the middle of the project. We can see some stagnation, but it finished everything at the end. The Burn Up chart shows a completely different picture though. The scope of the project increased in the beginning of the project, and some scope was removed at the end of the project. By the deadline. So while the team has made steady progress through the entire duration of the project, it appeared that they weren't doing much in the middle and did a lot at the end because of the scope changes. So looking at the burn-up chart and burn-down chart will give you a good sense of how you're progressing in the project and how much work you have left. They're basically telling the same story, but but in reverse. So burn-down chart is telling you how much work you still have left, and burn-up chart tells you how much work you have completed. And it's also important when you're looking at the burn-up and burn-down chart to take into consideration any changes in scope, or else you will get an incomplete picture. Okay, I hope this video is helpful, and be sure to sign up for a free course if you want to learn more about project management at www.examspm.com/free.
