Sprint planning is the process of selecting work items from a backlog and committing to completing them within a fixed time period, usually one to four weeks.

In ClickUp, the Sprints feature provides built-in sprint cycles with backlog management, story points, burndown charts, and velocity tracking so your team can plan, execute, and measure work in one place.

Feature availability and limits vary by plan and user role. Learn more

What is Sprint planning?

Sprint planning is a recurring meeting held at the start of each sprint. The team pulls work from a prioritized backlog, agrees on what can realistically be completed in the sprint window, assigns tasks, and sets estimates.

Done well, it gives the team a clear, committed scope for the next one to four weeks and a shared understanding of who owns what.

Without a defined process, sprint planning tends to drift. Teams overpromise, underestimate, and lose visibility into whether they are on track mid-sprint. The sections below walk through how to set this up in ClickUp from backlog to progress tracking.

Organize your backlog

The backlog is the source of truth for all planned work. In ClickUp, the backlog typically lives as a dedicated List inside your Sprint Folder, sitting alongside your active sprints. Before your first sprint, get this List in order.

Prioritize Your tasks

Use ClickUp's built-in Priority levels of Urgent, High, Normal, Low to signal which items should be pulled into the next sprint.

For teams that need more nuance, Custom Fields work well here. A dropdown field for initiative, a label for team, or a number field for business value score all give you additional ways to filter and sort the backlog during planning.

Estimate with Sprint Points

Sprint Points are a ClickApp that lets teams assign a relative effort estimate to each task. Point values are customizable. Common scales include 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and 13, but you can set any values that work for your team.

To enable Sprint Points:

1. Open the App Center.
2. Search for Sprint Points and activate it for the relevant Spaces.

Once enabled, a Sprint Points field appears on each task. Set points during backlog grooming so estimates are in place before sprint planning begins.

Create a Sprint

With your backlog organized, you're ready to create the Sprint Folder structure. Sprints in ClickUp live inside a Sprint Folder, which is a container that holds your backlog List and each sprint as its own List.

To create a Sprint Folder:

1. In the sidebar, hover over the Space where you want sprints to live.
2. Click the plus icon and select Sprint Folder.
3. Configure your sprint settings, including sprint duration and start date.
4. Click Create. Your first sprint is added automatically.

Sprint duration defaults to two weeks but can be set to any length at the Folder level. Only owners and admins can configure the default settings. Once set, members can create new sprints and manage sprint tasks within those settings.

Plan the Sprint

Once the Sprint Folder is created, sprint planning is a matter of pulling the right tasks from the backlog and distributing work across the team. There are a few distinct steps here, and order matters.

Step 1: Move tasks from the backlog

Open the sprint and click the Backlog card to access your backlog List. For each task you want to include, click Add to sprint in the Sprints column.

To move multiple tasks at once, select them using the checkboxes and use the Bulk Action toolbar to add them to the current sprint.

Only pull tasks that the team can realistically complete. A sprint that starts overcommitted rarely finishes on time, and the sprint planning meeting is the right place to push back on scope rather than mid-sprint.

Step 2: Set Sprint Points

With tasks in the sprint, check that each one has a point estimate. If estimates were set during backlog grooming, this is a quick review step.

If not, set points now. The total Sprint Points committed to the sprint becomes your forecast, which is used to calculate burndown and velocity.

Step 3: Assign tasks

Click the Assigned card to filter for unassigned tasks and distribute work across the team.

ClickUp's Workload view is useful here if you want to verify capacity before finalizing assignments. It shows each team member's total assigned points or hours against their set capacity.

Track Sprint progress

Once the sprint is running, three Dashboard cards give you the clearest view of how the team is tracking. All three are available on the Business plan and above and are added to a Dashboard from the Sprints card section.

At the end of each sprint, review incomplete tasks before closing. ClickUp will prompt you to move them to the next sprint, push them back to the backlog, or close them.

Try Sprints in ClickUp!

If your Workspace doesn't have Sprints enabled yet, a Workspace owner or admin can activate the Sprints ClickApp from the App Center. If you don't have a ClickUp account, you can get started for free.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions about Sprint planning for Agile teams.

How long should a sprint be?

Two weeks is the most common sprint length and a good starting point. One-week sprints work well for teams that need fast feedback loops. Three to four-week sprints suit teams working on complex features. Start at two weeks and adjust based on how often work carries over.

What happens to incomplete tasks at the end of a sprint?

When you close a sprint in ClickUp, you're prompted to move unfinished tasks to the next sprint, send them back to the backlog, or close them. No work is lost. The decision should reflect whether the task is still a priority.

How do Sprint Points work?

Sprint Points are a relative effort estimate, not a measure of hours. A task worth 8 points is roughly twice as complex as a 4-point task, not twice as long. After several sprints, your average velocity tells you how much the team can realistically commit to each cycle.