Week Planning specifies what the team will demo to the Product BoardProduct BoardTwo or more stakeholders who see the team's weekly demo and coach it — the human in the loop, with no single lead. by the end of the week. It blends work from multiple initiatives and any non-initiative work into one coherent week, then refreshes the ApproachThe ApproachThe multi-week narrative roadmap — titled weekly outcomes ("The one where…"), each with a demo, planned backwards from success. against what reality did last week.

Purpose

Turn this week’s slot of the Approach into a believable set of weekly goals and a clear demo commitment — what the team will genuinely finish and show the Product Board.

Cadence

Weekly, around 60 minutes — roughly 30 minutes of core planning plus 30 minutes reserved for the discussion the planning surfaces. It runs at the start of the team’s week, whenever that week begins.

Attendees

The Team. Planning is a team activity, not one person handing out tasks.

Inputs

  • The Approach — the week titles and goals the plan is being cut from.
  • Current capacity — who is around, and for how much of the week.
  • Dependencies — what the team is waiting on, and who it might block.
  • Bugs and urgent work — the non-initiative work competing for the same hours.

Format

Work through four moves in order:

  • Look ahead. Scan the week for events, holidays, conferences, and other obligations that change available time.
  • Collect your work. Pull together everything in play: are you on track towards the Approach goal, what changed, what’s left over from last week, what needs to be demoed, any other work such as bugs and tickets, and which Uncertainties the team wants to reduce.
  • Plan. Distribute the work and assign names to it with @-mentions, optionally breaking it down per day or by type, and set the Weekly Goals and the demo for the Product Board.
  • Review. Read the plan back and make changes; check it holds together as one coherent week, and update the Approach if the timeline or week titles have shifted materially.

The 75% capacity rule

Outputs

  • The Week Plan — the weekly outcomes and demos, with assignments and an optional daily breakdown.
  • An updated Approach: if titles or weekly goals shift materially, the change is written back into the plan so it stays the team’s living roadmap.

Common pitfalls

  • Blending it with the Check-inDaily Check-inA 15-minute daily ritual where the team surfaces reality and unknowns rather than reporting status. or Collab Time. They have different purposes; Week Planning sets outcomes, the Check-in surfaces daily reality, Collab Time does the deep work. Mixing them muddies all three.
  • Over-loading capacity. No buffer means every interruption costs a goal.
  • Losing the Approach narrative. Plan what the team will demo, not the activity that fills the hours; if the week titles stop telling a story, the team wanders.
  • Not updating the Approach. A material change that never makes it back into the Approach leaves the team’s roadmap quietly wrong.