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burnchart
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burnchart/docs/IDEA.md

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#Idea

##Summary

An app showing a burndown chart for issues in a GitHub milestone. A choice of strategies for calculating the size of each issue to determine the progress. Running completely client-side apart from GitHub authentication via a Firebase service. In use by the community since 2012.

##Community

Anyone can contibute their time by working on issues. Read the Architecture document to get oriented. Ours are tracked in Assembly as bounties. You can use the contact form widget inside the app or burnchart@helpful.io to contact the lead developer, Radek. You can also use Tally to vote on upcoming features.

##Background

The project started in 2012 at the University of Cambridge in a bioinformatics team. The aim was to get better at estimating the workload for each release we were marking. The original app was running on Node.js. Then a major rewrite in 2013 moved it completely client side. Another rewrite is happening now, 2014, on the Assembly platform.

##Goals

Make developers better at managing their workload.

##Key Features

  1. Running from the browser, apart from GitHub account sign in which uses Firebase backend.
  2. Private repos; sign in with your GitHub account.
  3. Store projects in browser's localStorage.
  4. Off days; specify which days of the week to leave out from ideal burndown progression line.
  5. Trend line; to see if you can make it to the deadline at this pace.
  6. Different point counting strategies; select from 1 issues = 1 point or read size from issue label.

##Target Audience

Developers who use simple issue trackers like GitHub issues and want to graduate from the basic progress bar that GitHub provides.

##Competing Products

The burndown or burndown chart concept is pretty widespread in more enterprisey (Jira, PivotalTracker, ThoughtWorks) software. These are too heavy.

There are also products that nicely integrate with GitHub (AgileZen, Scrumwise). But these are not GitHub-first.

And finally products built on top of the GitHub API (Burndown, SweepBoard). One is not pretty and one does not do charts yet.

This product puts the chart front and centre, as a place from which insights can be gained. Some people use Kanban boards, we use Burncharts.

##Monetization Strategy

I think that this product is useful but, like with gitter.im or david-dm.org hasn't reached a threshold where people would pay for it.