Need a Sprint planning template? Get it right inside Gmail!

To improve and speed up your processes, you can build your sprint planning template in Gmail. And we are here to show you how to do it step by step.

There are multiple benefits to running your sprint workflow inside the most used free email service – Gmail stats show that 90% of US startups prefer it over other clients. To make it easier, you can develop practical sprint planning templates.

In this article, we’ll explore the possibilities and tools needed to make sprint planning work within Gmail. Keep reading for a comprehensive guide and best practices!

What is Sprint Planning?

Sprint planning, also called Agile sprint planning is one of the steps of the Scrum methodology. Product and engineering teams use it to prioritize their projects and get things done the right way. It also helps them to decide who will be able to join a specific project or task.

These teams need to have the ability to track their scrum capacity planning, to schedule the right projects at the proper time. And if they are able to run efficient sprint planning, they succeed in keeping their terms and delivering excellent results.

Why implement Sprint planning in Gmail?

You can make your projects a lot more productive if you keep them in your inbox. We can bet that you receive many requests related to your projects via email. Most development and engineering teams do.

If this is your case, you can manage your sprints better by cutting down steps.

Here’s an example: say your team is working on a new software update. Every time a team member has to notify their collaborators of relevant changes, test results, and potential issues, they have to send yet another email with the whole context.

Then, these emails need to be summarized and added to a log on your task management software or wherever you organize your workflow. As tasks move through the needed steps, another email has to be sent to update everyone.

That leads to inbox clutter, misplaced files, and, of course, a lack of overall communication.

In contrast, here are some benefits of bringing sprint planning to Gmail:

Work in a visual way

The best task and project managers include different views to organize and predict your workflow. The Kanban view is popular among agile teams, as it highlights current tasks and helps people define priorities better. With the right tools, you can implement Kanban in Gmail, which transforms a traditional inbox into a productive, visual workspace.

Eliminate the back-and-forth between tools

Instead of listing all the features that the team will implement during the development process in different software, and making extensive sprint meetings, you can focus every communication in just one place: Gmail.

After all, switching between various tools can be time-consuming and lead to context-switching: a productivity loss from lack of momentum. On the flip side, if all the sprint chats happen where your tasks are, you don’t have to import and export task files, nor update each team member individually.

All the information you need

Everything you need to get things done in your sprint planning you can have in your inbox:

• Tasks and subtasks
• Email history
• Priority levels
• Links and files
• Deadlines
• Assignees
• Tags
• Notes
• Bug descriptions,
• Product specs

Building a Sprint Planning Template in Gmail with a Shared Inbox

Creating a Sprint Planning template requires two main priorities: making sure the process is accessible to all team members and developing a replicable, flexible guideline.

Where do tasks come from?

A team inbox

Some sprint teams usually have alias email addresses, such as [email protected] or [email protected], for instance. And many of them still share logins and passwords to work inside their team accounts, so they extract the backlog from incoming emails.

Let’s face it: dev teams don’t have time to waste on complicated email steps, such as forwarding or copying emails between the team members to assign tasks. They need a clear workflow so that just with a look and a few clicks they can figure out the whole sprint plan.

So, with Drag, teams can set dynamic workspaces by implementing a Gmail shared inbox. That is, a collective space in which users can check and manage emails sent to the team inbox.

You can add all the team members to the shared board, where they will be able to read and reply to emails as part of a team without leaving their own accounts.

Emails that arrive in personal inboxes

Requests can also come from the team members’ personal inboxes, such as [email protected]. That’s why you can just drag emails from your inbox to the team’s inbox. Quick and easy.

Requests coming from other channels

There are times when feature requests can come from the company’s public roadmap, social media, or a third-party chat.  Or even from a phone call or in person, depending on how the company works.

A shared inbox like Drag makes it possible to create new cards that you can fill with all the data available about these requests. Notice that you can also create cards inside shared boards, so you can centralize all your work in just one place.

That is, you should provide the correct workspace for the sprint planning to happen so that your team can benefit the most from it. Thankfully, this is a pretty straightforward process with our solution, DragApp.

First things first: Install Drag for free

This is the essential step before starting to build your template. You need to add Drag’s Chrome Extension to your browser. But don’t worry, it’s free and it just takes a few seconds. Then, open, or refresh your Gmail tab.

Next, a popup from Gmail’s authorizations will appear on the screen.  You can read it, and then accept the permissions to allow Drag to work on your Gmail inbox.

Creating a custom board

• Open Gmail and click on the + icon next to Drag Boards
• You can pick from pre-existing workflows or set up your own:
• On Add incoming email, select Shared inbox:
• Write your team email, such as devs@companyname, and click Next.
• Now you’ll be redirected to your new workspace.

Adding your team to your board

Of course, the board is only useful when the team has access to it. To invite everyone, all you have to do is:

• Log into the board
• Click on the Share Board with team on the top right
• In the next screen, add the emails of the team members you want to invite:
  

Step 1: Use Kanban for a better view of work

Drag’s Kanban workspace view mode provides a holistic view of your sprint planning. You can visualize and interact with the board by setting columns with the necessary stages for your projects. These columns are adjustable, you can resize them if you need, and change their places if necessary.

Then you can easily drag and drop what we call cards (emails and tasks) between these columns. This process helps you change and track the sprints’ status in a much more clear and faster way.

Step 2: List your product backlog

The first column of your sprint planning template is the backlog. Here you can add your sprints in three different ways:

• Receive emails on a team shared inbox, such as product@ or dev@;
• Drag emails from a personal inbox to the team inbox;
• Create cards and fill them with backlog information;

Step 3: Define your tagging system

Drag has its own highly customizable and visual tag system. You can create custom shared tags for each kind of task and even add color coding to the mix. So whenever a team member logs into the board, they can easily get a glimpse of their next steps on the project.

Step 4: Assign tasks to team members

Assignments are a key part of a successful sprint planning template. Managers should allocate tasks based on expertise, availability, and priorities so that no task is left undone before the next sprint.

Step 5: Set due dates

Your due dates are key. So when setting up sprint planning templates on a shared inbox, you should define them accordingly.

Usually, sprints last a month or less, so that teams can move faster through their projects. Then, as the sprint ends, the leader can collect feedback on task completion, overall balance between task lengths, and workload distribution. This data can be used later to define more efficient sprint planning templates.

With Drag, you can even organize your sprints easily through a Google Calendar integration. That way, users will have sprint periods added automatically to their calendars and receive all the relevant notifications.

Step 6: Chat with the teammates with context

What if you could eliminate some time on the sprint planning meetings? Actually, with Drag, you can. In each card of your board, there is an internal chat, where you can exchange information about its content.

It makes teams concentrate the conversations about a specific matter right where it is. With no need to mention the whole context in a third-party tool, such as Slack or Google Chat.

If you type @ and the name of a team member, they will automatically receive an email, notifying them that they need to take action in that specific sprint. The messages arrive in real-time, and they stay there on the card, so you can read it at any time to have all the context you need.

They’ll also be notified on Drag’s activity log, so that the next time they open the shared inbox, all relevant changes are listed accordingly. This is particularly useful for asynchronous global teams since it eliminates the need for contextual email threads and long remote meetings.

Step 7: Review your sprint

The final step of a sprint is receiving feedback. After the predefined time elapses, managers should do a review to address productivity, potential bottlenecks, and points of improvement.

With Drag’s analytics reports, they can check different data, such as response time reports. That gives a reliable set of information about the overall productivity rates, which types of tasks are faster and slower to complete, and what has delayed the sprint.

Then, teams should have the space to offer their own feedback with internal perspectives on what worked and what didn’t during the time. With all of that in mind, the next sprint can be better designed and adapted to the team’s workflow.

Wrapping up

Now you are all set to start using Gmail as your new workflow for scrum sprint planning. With Gmail’s easy interface and shared inbox software’s resources, your team has everything they need to work on current projects right where tasks start.

As a bonus, with a tested and optimized sprint planning template, the overall productivity rises, as well as project conclusion and company growth.