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Beyond burnups: The different ways to forecast delivery (and when to use them)
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Oct 2 2026
Pages: 164
Weight: 0.50
Height: 0.35 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Learn to forecast delivery with evidence, not hope
Too many organisations still forecast delivery with a straight line and a hope, extending an average forward and presenting the intersection point as though it were a fact rather than a guess. Burnup charts are familiar, easy to build, and trusted by almost every agile team. They are also quietly misleading, compressing variability into a single mean and presenting one outcome as though it were representative of every possible future.
Beyond Burnups cuts through that false certainty, but it doesn't stop at just run a Monte Carlo simulation either. Feature WIP and cross-team dependencies quietly break the simplistic version of that advice, which is why this book matches the forecasting technique to the actual shape of your work, whether that's a single team, a team juggling multiple features, or an initiative spanning several teams with dependencies between them.
Drawing on years of hands-on delivery and coaching experience, Nicolas Brown goes beyond the theory of Monte Carlo simulation to show what actually works in practice, and what still trips teams up. This book is for delivery leads, product managers, PMOs, and leaders who are tired of forecasts that feel more hopeful than accurate, and want honest, defensible answers to when will it be done.
What You'll Learn:
- Why burnup charts create false certainty, and what they get wrong
- How to run Monte Carlo simulation properly, including where just use Monte Carlo breaks down with feature WIP and dependencies
- How to forecast across a single team, multiple features, and multi-team initiatives with dependencies
- Real examples and free, ready-to-use tools, rather than just theory
Filled with practical examples, real datasets and implementation guidance, Beyond Burnups moves beyond theory and shows how modern forecasting can be applied in real organisations. Rather than attempting to predict a single future, it teaches readers how to understand a range of possible outcomes and make better decisions as a result.
Praise for Beyond Burnups
Beyond Burnups is a quick, sharp, and essential read for anyone responsible for shipping software. With its help, you can shift delivery from hopeful guesswork to honest, probabilistic decision-making.
Steve Pereira, author of Flow Engineering
You'll never look at a burndown chart the same way again.
Benjamin Richards, Systems Coach at KFC and Team Topologies Advocate
Beyond Burnups takes you on a journey from legacy burnup charts to multi-team Monte Carlo, AI (naturally) and how we should consider the use of probabilistic forecasting for expected value generation. It is a must read for anyone serious about modern day software delivery.
Ravi Nar, CTO at Student.com
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