Free template
A sprint planning template that fills itself in.
Enter the sprint dates, who's on the team and their days off, and the goal. You get a finished sprint plan with working days, holidays, capacity per person and a points forecast, ready to paste into Jira, Confluence, Notion or Linear.
NameDays off% on team
Growth team – Sprint 14
Dates: Oct 19 – Nov 1, 2026 (10 working days)
Sprint goal
Customers can pay with Apple Pay at checkout.
Capacity
| Person | Days off | On team | Focused days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ana | 0 | 100% | 7 |
| Ben | 2 | 100% | 5.6 |
| Chris | 5 | 100% | 3.5 |
| Dina | 0 | 50% | 3.5 |
| Team | 19.6 |
Focus factor 70%. This sprint has 80% of a full sprint's capacity, so plan about 32 points (last velocity 40).
Who's out
- Ben: 2 days
- Chris: 5 days
Committed work
- Apple Pay button on checkout
- Payment confirmation email
- Refund flow for Apple Pay
Risks and dependencies
- Waiting on Apple merchant verification
- Chris is out the second week
Definition of done
- Code reviewed and merged
- Tests pass in CI
- Deployed to staging and checked
- Docs and release notes updated
Copy pastes as formatted text into Google Docs, Notion or Confluence. Markdown is for GitHub, Jira or Slack.
Paste it into Confluence, Notion, Jira, Linear or a GitHub issue.
How to run sprint planning with this template.
Before the meeting, fill in the dates and ask everyone for their days off in the sprint. That one step is what most teams skip, and it's why sprints get overcommitted: a ten-day sprint with two people out for a week is a 60% sprint, not a full one.
In the meeting, agree the sprint goal first, then pull work from the top of the refined backlog until you reach the forecast. Write down risks and dependencies as you go, especially anything waiting on another team or on someone who's out.
After the meeting, paste the plan where the team will see it and link it from the sprint in your tracker. At the review, compare what you finished with the forecast and adjust the focus factor if you're consistently over or under.
For a single number without the full plan, use the sprint capacity calculator. To lay out every sprint of the year, use the sprint calendar 2027.
The template asks who's out. The calendar already knows.
Days off are the hardest part of the template to fill in, because they live in people's heads. On a Forgot board they're already there, next to the sprint dates and each person's holidays. This one's live.
- Each sprint is a band across the team
- Time off and holidays inside each sprint
- The summary names who's away during each sprint
- Drag time off in and see who's missing
Questions
What should a sprint planning template include?
The sprint goal, the dates and working days, each person's capacity after time off, a forecast from last sprint's velocity, the work the team commits to, risks and dependencies, and the definition of done.
How long should sprint planning take?
The Scrum Guide caps it at eight hours for a one-month sprint, and it's usually shorter for shorter sprints. Many two-week teams plan in one to two hours when the backlog is refined beforehand.
What is a good sprint goal?
One sentence that says what will be true at the end of the sprint, like “Customers can pay with Apple Pay at checkout.” It should guide decisions when the plan changes mid-sprint.
How do you plan a sprint when people are on vacation?
Count each person's days off, work out the sprint's capacity against a full one, and scale last sprint's velocity by it. The template does this for you.