# How to plan a sprint without overcommitting > Sprint planning in five steps: set a goal, check capacity, choose work, break it down and name the risks. Includes how teams without sprints do it. Sprint planning decides what the team will do in the next one to four weeks. The trick is to commit to a goal and slightly less work than you think you can do. Web page: https://kansohq.app/guides/how-to-plan-a-sprint Updated: 5 October 2026 ## What sprint planning is A sprint is a fixed period, usually one to four weeks, in which a team aims to finish a chosen set of work. Sprint planning is the meeting at the start where the team picks that work and agrees how it will approach it. The output is a goal and a short list of committed work. ## Five steps 1. **Set the goal.** One sentence. If everything else slips and this ships, the sprint worked. 2. **Check capacity.** Count the days people are actually available. Holidays, support duty and meetings take real time. 3. **Choose the work.** Start from the top of the ranked backlog and stop when the capacity is used. Include fewer items than the maximum. 4. **Break it down.** Make each item small enough to finish in a couple of days, and check each has acceptance criteria. 5. **Name the risks.** What could block us, and who unblocks it? Write it down. ## Commit to less than you can do Plans fail on the unexpected: a bug that needs a day, a colleague who is ill, a requirement that was unclear. Leave room for them. A team that finishes what it committed to, and then picks up something extra, trusts its own plans. One that overcommits every time stops believing them. ## Mark the stretch Keep a short “stretch” list of work you will do if there is time. That way, finishing early is planned for and the committed list stays honest. ## If you do not use sprints Teams that work in continuous flow still benefit from a regular planning moment. Once a week, decide what the next few days are for, look at what is blocked and agree what comes off the list. The goal and the risks matter just as much as the cadence. ## Mistakes to avoid - Planning without a goal, so the sprint is just a pile of tickets. - Using the best case as the capacity. - Adding new work mid-sprint without removing anything. - Skipping the retrospective, so the next plan repeats the last one’s mistakes. ## Estimating the work Teams estimate in days, in points or not at all. Whichever you use, three habits help: - Estimate with the people who will do the work. An estimate handed down is a guess made by the wrong person. - Estimate in ranges when you are unsure. “Two to four days” says more than “three”. - Keep a record of estimates against what happened. After a few sprints, you will know how much to trust your own. ## Splitting a big item If an item will take more than a few days, split it. Good ways to split: - By step: do the first thin slice of the whole flow before polishing any one part. - By case: the common case first, the rare cases after. - By risk: the part you are least sure of first, so the surprise comes early. - By user: one kind of person first, then the next. ## Handling interruptions Support, urgent bugs and questions will arrive. Plan for them rather than pretending they will not: set aside a share of capacity, often 10 to 20 percent, for unplanned work, and rotate who takes the interruptions so the others can keep their focus. If unplanned work regularly takes more than that, it is telling you something about the product or the process. ## A sprint plan in Kanso Use the [sprint plan template](https://kansohq.app/templates/sprint-plan.md): sprint goal, committed work, stretch, risks and what is out of scope. Turn the committed to-dos into cards on the [board](https://kansohq.app/product/boards.md) and see the due dates on the [calendar](https://kansohq.app/product/calendar.md). Kanso has no sprint object, so a sprint is a page and a board for the period, which suits teams that mix sprints and flow. ## Questions ### How long should a sprint be? One to four weeks. Two weeks is the most common because it is long enough to finish something real and short enough to correct course quickly. ### How do you decide how much work to take into a sprint? Count the available days, subtract holidays, support duty and meetings, then choose work from the top of the ranked backlog until that capacity is used. Take slightly less than the maximum. ### What is a sprint goal? One sentence that says what the sprint is for. If everything else slipped and the goal was met, the sprint worked. ### Can we plan sprints without special software? Yes. A page for the plan, a board for the work and a calendar for the dates are enough. ## Keep reading - [How to run a retrospective that changes something](https://kansohq.app/guides/how-to-run-a-retrospective.md): A retrospective is only worth it if something changes afterwards. Learn a simple format, how to run it in an hour and how to follow through. - [How to set up a kanban board for a software team](https://kansohq.app/guides/how-to-set-up-a-kanban-board.md): Set up a kanban board in eight steps: map your process, choose columns, size cards, set limits and review weekly. Includes column sets for software teams. - [How to plan your week around your tasks](https://kansohq.app/guides/how-to-plan-your-week.md): A weekly planning habit for engineers and team leads: gather due dates, estimate honestly, rank what matters and leave room for the unexpected. - [Sprint planning template: goal, work and risks | Kanso](https://kansohq.app/templates/sprint-plan.md): A sprint planning template with the sprint goal, committed work, stretch, risks and what is out of scope. Copy it, or start it in Kanso. - [Retrospective template for software teams | Kanso](https://kansohq.app/templates/retrospective.md): A retrospective template with what went well, what did not, what we learned and what we will change, each change with an owner. Copy it, or start it in Kanso. ## Parts of Kanso used - [Kanso Boards](https://kansohq.app/product/boards.md): A board for each piece of work. Cards carry a priority, an owner, a due date and the criteria that say when they are done. - [Kanso Calendar](https://kansohq.app/product/calendar.md): Due dates land on the calendar by themselves. Your open tasks sit beside the week, sorted by how much they matter. - [Kanso Docs](https://kansohq.app/product/docs.md): Pages with headings, to-dos, tables and code, kept inside the project they describe, next to its board and its release. [Kanso home, with plans and prices](https://kansohq.app/index.md)