Can I use data from other apps in these sprint planning templates?

Yes, Visor has bi-directional integrations with Jira, Asana, Salesforce, and other apps. This enables you to use your product data from these apps in Visor’s sprint planning templates.

The bi-directional integration keeps Visor in sync with your apps to preserve your single version of the truth and prevent manual updates. You can even import multiple projects to create sprint planning views that incorporate all the teams, projects, or products in your organization or business unit.

Can I use live Jira data in Visor’s sprint planning templates?

Yes, you can connect Jira and Visor to visualize your Jira sprints in Visor’s crystal clear views, which you can easily share with stakeholders that lack Jira access too.

Visor’s sophisticated bi-directional integration with Jira maintains the integrity of your data and keeps Visor and Jira in perfect sync to preserve your single source of truth.

Can I visualize my sprint plans in other date groupings too?

Yes, in Visor you can easily create views of your sprint plans using alternate date ranges. This can be useful when you need to take a longer term view. You can use the following date ranges in your sprint plans:

• Sprints & Days
• Weeks & Days
• Months & Days
• Months & Weeks
• Quarters & Weeks
• Quarters & Months
• Years & Months

Can I add story points in Visor’s sprint planning templates?

Yes, in Visor you can add story points and other time and effort estimates to the tasks in your sprint plans to help you ensure your sprint plans are feasible, achievable, and properly resourced.

Can I use the sprint plans I create in Visor to also monitor sprint progress and performance in real-time?

Yes, Visor can be used to:

• Plan sprints
• Organize and manage your product backlog
• Assign tasks within the sprint to team members
• Track sprint progress – using Gantt charts, timelines, Kanban boards, and dashboards
• Conduct sprint retrospectives
• Analyze past and current sprint performance
• Manage capacity across multiple sprints and projects

What formats, or view types can I use in Visor to produce sprint plans?

In Visor you can use AI Smart Templates to create sprint plans using a range of view types, including:

• Gantt Charts
• Roadmaps
• Timelines and Capacity Charts
• Table or Spreadsheet Views
• Kanban Views

You can also create these sprint plans manually using these view types, and add synchronized dashboard views to easily understand your sprint progress, performance, and KPIs.

Can I add milestones to sprint planning templates created in Visor?

Yes, you can easily add tasks as milestones or set existing tasks to be displayed as milestones in Visor’s Gantt chart view. These milestones can be color coded based on criteria such as priority, status, assignee, or any other relevant criteria.

Adding milestones in Gantt charts helps you to highlight and identify which tasks are critical steps on the journey to the successful completion of your sprint or project.

Can I create high-level views that include all of my team’s sprints, or all of my organization’s sprints?

Yes, within Visor you can easily create visualizations that include multiple sprints or projects. You can use a range of formats to view your multi-sprint visualizations, including Gantt charts and Kanban boards.

These high-level sprint planning views can include details of individual tasks within a sprint, or simply show the overall details of a sprint itself. You can expand and collapse sprints within these views to show and hide details of the tasks within a sprint, for example to identify which specific tasks are behind schedule and dragging your sprint velocity down.

Can I use Visor’s sprint planning template to create varying views of my plans for different stakeholders?

Yes, using Visor you can easily create multiple versions of your sprint plans that are tailored to different audiences using the same real-time data.

Creating multiple – but synchronized – versions of your sprint plans enable you to ensure that you have the best view possible for specific teams, stakeholders, or purposes (such as sprint retrospectives).

Some of the attributes you can modify to create multiple custom views of a sprint plan include:

• “Zoom” or Timescale: Quarters and months for your executive board and sprints for your engineering team.
• Data Groupings: Group data by the assignee for your team views and by the strategic initiative for your executive board
• Levels of Task: Choose to show all task levels for personal views, epics to tasks for team views, and epics only for senior stakeholder views

Creating multiple views of your sprint plans for different team members, teams, stakeholders, or purposes is quick and easy. All views are synchronized and use the same underlying data source, which means you can have many different views of your sprint without having to manually reorganize or update data.

Can I group my sprint planning visualizations?

You can group your sprint plans by any dropdown field in your data. The best criteria for you will depend on the scale of your sprint, whether you are creating plans that include multiple sprints, how who your audience is, and how they plan to use the sprint plans you share with them..

Some common examples of how Visor users group data in their sprint planning visualizations include:

• Product
• Sprint
• Initiative
• Assignee
• Team
• Strategic goal
• Project Lead
• Quarter
• Theme

Can I use Visor’s sprint planning templates for free?

Yes, upon registering you will have a 14-day free trial of Visor’s Team plan, giving you access to all of Visor’s premium visualization types. After this trial period you can choose to select a Team or Starter plan, or continue on the Visor Free plan.

Why is using a Smart Template to create sprint plans better than creating your own plans from scratch or using generic templates?

Smart Templates in Visor are powered by AI, which uses your data, your prompts, and its learnings from thousands of human-created visualizations.

This enables it to produce sprint plans and other visualizations infused with best practices and fully customized to your precise requirements and objectives.

The difference between Smart Templates and regular templates for sprint planning is akin to the difference between wearing a finely tailored, top-of-the-line suit to an ill-fitting, under-sized, off-the-rack shabby suit and trying to make it fit like the professionally tailored version – it’s possible. Still, it will take you lots of time, effort, trial-and-error, and frustration to get there.

Using Smart Templates for sprint planning gets you off to the best possible start, saves you hours per sprint plan created, and saves you heaps of frustration. It’s a genuine game-changer in your ability to plan and visualize your sprints and projects.

Who typically uses Visor’s sprint planning templates?

These sprint planning templates are primarily used by:

• Engineers
• Development leads
• Product managers

However, Visor enables you to create real-time sprint planning visualizations that are ideal to share with other stakeholders, clients, and colleagues too.

Can I nest epics, user stories, tasks and subtasks (or other parent and child relationships) using this sprint planning template?

Yes, sprint plans created in Visor have comprehensive task-nesting support. Nesting is made easy in Visor. You can nest records below another record using:

• Drag-and-drop
• Keyboard shortcuts
• The record settings drop-down menu

If you import projects from apps like Jira, Asana, or Salesforce, Visor can maintain your nesting in full, so you don’t need to waste time manually re-nesting your project data.

What other templates are available in Visor?

Visor has a wide range of templates, which you can find in our Templates Library.

Templates in Visor are generated by AI based on your responses to a short series of questions, which enable the AI to understand what you are trying to achieve and produce a ready-configured template to suit your needs. This means that you are not limited to the set of templates we offer in our library, as the AI can meet needs that we haven’t listed or even considered.

How do I access AI-powered Smart Templates in Visor?

When you first log in to Visor, after entering your email address and how you want to use Visor, you will see a screen that asks, “What is this workbook for?” On this screen, there is a “Use Smart Template” button. 

You can then pick from a range of popular template categories, or click “Other” to ask the AI to create something different to the available options. You can use the free text box to supply additional information to help the AI create a set of visualizations (or templates) that will best meet your needs.

To access Smart Templates if you already have a Visor account, simply click the New Workbook button within an existing workbook, or Create a new workbook from the workbook list screen. Then when you’re asked “What is this workbook for?” click the “Use Smart Template” button.

What are the key steps in sprint planning?

The key steps in sprint planning are:

• Define the Sprint Goal – Determine a clear goal that this sprint should achieve
• Assess Team Capacity – Account for availability, past velocity, and planned absences.
• Review Product Backlog – A member of the team (typically the product owner/manager) presents top-priority items, and following a discussion the items to be included in the sprint are decided on.
• Break Down into Tasks – Decompose stories into actionable tasks.
• Estimate Effort Per Task – Estimate task effort using hours, story points, or another measurement
• Stakeholder Review (optional) – Share your plan with any stakeholders that you need approval from before starting the sprint
• Note Risks/Dependencies – Identify anything that could impact delivery.