Sprint Planner guide

Sprint Planner is a free two-week sprint planning tool for engineering teams. Map the commitments that shape ten working days, check whether the plan leaves useful focus time, and download a printable sprint calendar. It runs in your browser without an account. The planner and PDF generator require JavaScript; this guide does not.

Why I built Sprint Planner

A sprint goal and a list of tickets do not show how the team will find time to do the work. Planning, reviews, support, time off, and other commitments can leave a sprint looking possible on paper while breaking the available focus time into small pieces.

I built Sprint Planner as a rough sprint agenda and focus planner. Add the commitments that matter, look at the shape of the days, and adjust what you can before the sprint starts. The aim is to protect a realistic amount of focused work, with a printable plan you can keep visible on a desk or team board.

Use your normal backlog and calendar alongside it. Sprint Planner does not import tickets, schedule meetings, assign work to people, or calculate delivery capacity from team size or story points.

Quick start

1. Open Sprint Planner.
2. Enter Sprint No. and a Sprint goal, then select Sprint dates to choose the start date.
3. Select Add first block or + Add block on a day. Add major commitments such as sprint planning, support, review, or time off.
4. Choose Deep Work, Shallow Work, or Note, give the block a label, and choose Short, Medium, or Long. Select Add block to save it.
5. After at least three work blocks, use the forecast and day recommendations to review the plan. Add focus blocks where they make sense and revise commitments that fragment the day.
6. Select Download PDF, open the downloaded file, and check it before printing or sharing it.

For example, put planning and support into the relevant days first. Then look for space to reserve a longer feature-development block. Adding a focus block to the planner records your intention; it does not reserve time in your work calendar.

Sprint goal and dates

The sprint number accepts up to four digits. The sprint goal accepts up to 200 characters. Use the goal for a result the team wants to achieve, rather than listing every ticket.

Selecting Sprint dates opens your browser’s date picker. The planner generates ten weekdays, grouped into two sets of five, starting on or after the selected date. Saturdays and Sundays are skipped; public holidays are not detected automatically. A sprint can start on a weekday other than Monday. A weekend start produces the first day on the following Monday.

Blocks belong to Day 1 through Day 10. Changing the start date moves the existing structure to the new dates; it does not clear the blocks or move them according to their old calendar dates. This makes it possible to reuse a sprint pattern, but review every commitment after changing dates.

Adding and editing blocks

Choose a block type

• Deep Work represents focused work such as feature development, investigation, or a substantial review.
• Shallow Work represents coordination such as meetings, support, messages, or administration.
• Note records context such as a reminder, travel, or time off. Notes do not affect the focus metrics or day recommendations.

A Note saying “Day off” is a visible reminder. It does not remove that day from the forecast or reduce the model’s focus capacity. Apply your own judgment when assessing a sprint with absences.

Enter a nonempty label of up to 60 characters. Choose a rough duration: Short ≈ 30 minutes, Medium ≈ 1–2 hours, or Long ≈ 2–4 hours. These are categories, not exact start and finish times. Internally, they count as one, two, or three planning slots.

Change the plan

Select an existing block to edit its type, label, or duration. Use Save changes to apply the edit, Cancel to discard it, or Delete to remove the block.

On the desktop layout, Move block up and Move block down change a block’s order within its day. The order matters because the forecast uses it to identify uninterrupted deep work and returns to focus after coordination. These reordering controls are not present in the mobile layout.

Clear all on desktop, or Clear all blocks on mobile, immediately removes every block, including notes and drafts. It keeps the sprint number, goal, and start date. There is no confirmation or undo, so download a copy first if you need to retain the old plan.

Understanding the focus forecast

The browser dashboard appears after at least three Deep Work or Shallow Work blocks across the sprint. Notes do not count toward that minimum. Until then, the app asks for more blocks so the forecast has some planning information to use.

Focus Allocation

Focus Allocation is the number of planned Deep Work slots divided by a fixed sprint focus budget of 30 slots: three per day across ten days. The displayed percentage is capped at 100%.

This is a planning model, not measured working time or a percentage of your whole working day. It does not adjust for team size, holidays, or time off recorded as Notes. A higher percentage is useful only when those focus blocks are realistic.

Protected Build Windows

A protected build window is an uninterrupted run of Deep Work totaling at least two slots within one day. One Medium block qualifies, as do two adjacent Short blocks. Shallow Work breaks the run; Notes are ignored in the calculation.

Deep Work Restarts

This counts transitions from Shallow Work back to Deep Work within a day, with Notes ignored. The Context switch marker draws attention to a return to focused work after coordination. The count describes the order of planned blocks; it does not measure actual interruptions or time lost.

Coordination Load

Coordination Load is the share of planned work slots assigned to Shallow Work. Its denominator is the total of Deep Work and Shallow Work slots, so it differs from Focus Allocation’s fixed focus budget. Unplanned time and Notes are excluded.

The dashboard summarizes the plan as Protected, Balanced, Fragmented, or Coordination-heavy. Use the status to start a planning discussion: could you combine meetings, shorten a support window, or move coordination away from a useful focus block? The label is not a performance rating or a guarantee that the sprint will succeed.

Day recommendations and draft focus blocks

After the third work block, days with blocks can show a Day status message. Recommendations use the blocks you entered, their order, and a rough daily capacity of eight planning slots. Empty days do not show a status.

When a recommendation offers it, select the pencil action labelled Reserve focus time or Add draft deep work. It adds a Draft deep work block to that day. The draft appears with a dashed border and a Draft label.

Drafts are included in the forecast and the PDF. They do not represent a booking in another calendar. Open the draft, give it a useful label, adjust its duration, and select Save changes to confirm it as a regular block. Delete it if the proposed focus time is not realistic.

Recommendations cannot detect unrecorded meetings or availability. Add the major commitments first, then use the suggestions as prompts for deciding where focus time is feasible.

Downloading and printing the sprint plan

Select Download PDF to generate an A4 landscape document in your browser. The first download loads the PDF generator, so wait for preparation to finish. Allow the latest edits to settle before downloading.

The PDF includes the sprint number, goal, date range, ten-day grid, blocks, notes, and any draft labels. Focus metrics appear when work blocks are present. Unlike the browser dashboard, the PDF can show metrics before three work blocks have been added.

Each printed day has room for eight planning slots. The PDF includes blocks in order until the next block would exceed that limit, then shows +N more… for the remaining blocks. Those blocks remain in the browser plan but their full details are not printed. Notes also take space in the PDF even though they do not affect the forecast. Check busy days before using the printout as your team’s reference.

Open the file and use your PDF viewer’s print command. A4 landscape is the generated format; there is no Letter-size selector in Sprint Planner. If you print on different paper, check scaling and margins in the print preview.

The PDF is a snapshot. Later edits in the browser do not update an existing file or printout. Download a new copy after important changes, or leave space for handwritten updates.

Saved plans and sharing

Your sprint number, goal, start date, and blocks are saved automatically in the same browser’s local storage when available. Returning in that browser restores the working plan. There is one current plan, with no archive or undo history.

There is no account, server backup, shared editing session, or synchronization between devices. Sharing the app URL does not share the sprint data. Download the PDF to give someone a readable copy; the app does not import that PDF back into an editable plan.

Clearing site data or using a different browser profile can remove or hide your saved plan. If browser storage is blocked or full, the planner may continue to work while open, but changes may not survive a refresh. On a shared computer, the same browser profile may expose the saved plan to another person.

The site also loads analytics, including PDF-generation and recommendation events. See the privacy policy for site-wide information.

From a sprint plan to daily focus

Use Focus Calendar for a monthly sheet with one important task per day, and Focus Timer when you are ready to work on one outcome. Their calendar guide and timer guide explain those workflows. Use Agile Poker when the team needs to discuss story estimates before choosing the sprint work.

Open Sprint Planner or return to the Sprint Planner overview.