Sprint planning tools offer well-needed relief to product owners and project managers. They allow you to manage sprint meetings, prioritize tasks and see what can be achieved in each sprint, supporting your existing workflow. However, keep in mind that you’ll only enjoy these benefits if you’re using the right sprint planning tool.
In this article, we’ll take you through some of the best sprint planning tools (listed in no particular order) and explore the features offered by each. Although there are many others, we’ve focused on these ten tools, because they cover the absolute necessities of planning successful sprints ⚡
Before that, let’s first define a sprint planning tool and the key features to look out for when choosing a sprint planning tool for your team.
🚀 We’d love to learn more about your team and the challenges in your current workflow. Let’s chat!
What Is a Sprint Planning Tool?
A sprint planning tool is a software solution that allows collaborative sprint planning sessions among the scrum master, product owner, and the product development team. Sprint planning is an ongoing process that doesn’t stop until the end of a project. It gets the scrum team to identify product backlog items and commit to completing them.
With a good sprint planning template, the scrum master can identify and resolve blockers, allowing team members to work more efficiently on each product development phase.
Effective communication among product development teams is also key. This is usually done through regular scrum team meetings, known as events or ceremonies. A sprint planning tool can help you get the most out of these meetings. It helps you set and follow the scrum agenda, ensuring all team members are on the same page regarding the sprint goal and deliverables.
Important Features of a Sprint Planning Tool
There are lots of sprint planning tools available to support your processes – how do you know which is the right one for your team? Here are some critical features to look for when choosing an effective sprint planning tool.
Streamlined Scrum Workflow
Like a good requirements management tool, sprint planning tool should give you the features you need to streamline your scrum workflows. This starts with a clean, user-friendly design. It should be intuitive, customizable, and relatively easy to figure out. This allows team members to self-organize and get the work done quickly.
Additionally, color labeling and drag-and-drop features make it easier to assign tasks, keep your workspace organized and track progress. AI and automation features also play a significant role in optimizing workflows. We’ll discuss this in more detail later.
Integrations With the Tools You Use
The best sprint planning tools should provide integrations with your existing software stack. For example, the Tara sprint planning tool integrates with Slack, GitHub, and GitLab, bringing convenience to your team and enhance productivity.
For example, slack integration promotes collaboration between product development teams. Meanwhile, GitHub and GitLab integration helps you import GitHub issues and turn them into tasks. You need these integrations to run efficient sprints.
AI and Automation Features
Automation and AI take away the repetitive, mundane tasks that you previously had to conduct manually. Automating your sprint planning process reduces the amount of time spent planning sprint schedules and incorporating changes.
A sprint planning tool should have various automation capabilities. Ideally, you want to automatically populate sprint issues, set sprint schedules, and carry over unfinished work to the next sprint. The right sprint planning tool will also autogenerate weekly reports and help you identify your team’s capacity and velocity.
AI and automation features save you time and effort. They also help you plan your sprints better by allowing you to predict future sprint loads based on previous sprints.
Team Management Features
Communication is a key factor for scrum teams. Your tool needs collaboration features that allow team members to exchange information easily. The best tools allow team members to add comments to a task card and tag fellow team members. This eliminates the need for endless email threads. Sprint planning meetings also become shorter and more productive.
Since sprints are super time bound, effective sprint planning tools help scrum masters set and control the scope of each project. Pick a tool offering maximum visibility to keep the entire team motivated and informed. Planning and backlog item identification becomes easy when there is a transparent layout.
Best Sprint Planning Tools
Taking the features stated in the previous section into consideration, you can choose a sprint planning tool that will suit the needs of your project and team. Next, let’s look at the best sprint planning tools in the market.
1. Tara
Tara offers a modern and simplified interface for sprint planning. There are no complex or unnecessary functionalities to distract your team. The platform is designed for simplicity to take the stress out of sprint planning. This helps your product development team get more work done with less effort.
This sprint planning software has an intuitive interface that allows you to plan sprints, prioritize tasks, and track progress- all in one platform.
Designed for efficiency, Tara allows users plan sprints and groom their backlog with ease. Tracking tasks and requirements has never been easier, thanks to Tara’s inbuilt sprint insights. This shows you daily and weekly sprint progress, ensuring your releases stay on schedule. Running your daily scrums is also seamless- Tara’s insights will help you and your team identify blockers and plan smarter sprints.
Tara also offers several automation features to streamline your workflow. For starters, the task automation feature- available upon Git sync- lets you auto-complete tasks from your source control. That means less time on updating tickets and tasks and more time on building and shipping.
Here are additional features available on Tara:
- Bi-directional GitHub sync
- Process automation
- Collaboration features with @mentions
- Real-time updates on every code push
- Predictive analytics
Tara integrates with Slack, GitHub, and GitLab.
Tara offers a free forever plan for individuals and small teams. Paid packages start at only $5 per user per month.
2. Wrike
Wrike is an enterprise-grade, collaborative work management software. It helps scrum masters track and manage workflow processes easily.
Wrike features can be placed into two broad categories, project management, and team collaboration. It offers interactive Gantt charts, pre-built workflows, and accounting integrations. It’s also available in multiple languages. Other features include:
- Automated scheduling and approval systems
- Real time alerts and notifications
- Sprint backlog management
- Collaboration tools
Mobile apps on iOS and Android apps are available with live notifications so that you can check your projects on the go. The apps are available offline and auto-sync when you reconnect to the internet.
Wrike has a separate feature for marketers called “Wrike for Marketers,” which is an optional tool. It integrates with Adobe, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, DropBox, Microsoft Office 365, Azure AD, Salesforce.com, and Box.com.
Wrike prices start from $9.80 monthly. There’s also a free plan.
3. ClickUp
ClickUp is an intuitive, agile project management tool that helps teams to work smarter. More than simply a task management tool, ClickUp is an all-in-one productivity tool where you can plan, organize and collaborate with teammates.
With ClickUp, you can do your billing and invoicing on the platform. It has a simple user interface with a real-time chat feature with mention capabilities. Additional features include:
- Time tracking
- Custom views and statuses
- Dependencies
- Assignment and backlog management
- Automatic time capture
Click Up is one of the most popular agile tools. You can create To-do lists on the platform to see what tasks you have to prioritize in a day. It allows you to automatically carry unfinished work into the next sprint and sync your team’s development with GitLab, GitHub, and Bitbuckets.
Sprint templates are available for those who want to create a sprint in a jiffy. The pricing starts from $5 monthly for small agile teams. It has a “Free Forever” plan that accommodates unlimited projects.
4. Jira
Jira is a household name in the digital world of project management tools. This popular platform allows development teams to track issues in real time and link them to related code. Focused teams working in sprints can work faster because Jira’s scrum boards help break down complex projects into manageable pieces.
The roadmaps provided by Jira have full visibility. This gives team members the context they need to make quick decisions while staying on top of the bigger goals. It’s also easy to track requirements and user stories. Other key features include:
- Customizable dashboards
- Bug, milestone, and launch tracking
- Flexible, customizable workflows
- Task management
- Business process automation
Jira is offered in four packages: Jira Work Management, Jira Software, Jira Service Management, and Jira Align. It Integrates with source control programs like Clearcase, Git, Mercurial, Perforce, Subversion, Team Foundation Server, and Concurrent Versions System (CVS).
You can color code tasks and use various icons to mark tasks and other vital elements of your project. The pricing starts at $7.50 monthly.
5. Teamwork
Teamwork is a web-based project management tool that allows users to tackle team collaboration and task management easily. It helps teams outline everything they need to do to hit project goals. Teamwork lets you arrange unlimited tasks in one central location where you can prioritize work.
You can create subtasks on this project management platform and tackle budget management as well. Teamwork has mobile apps available to iOS and Android users. Some of its core features are:
- Available in multiple languages
- Compliance tracking
- Drag-and-drop capabilities
- Product backlog management
- Project templates are available
- Provides collaboration features
There is a freemium version of the tool for up to 5 users. The standard plan starts at $10 per user monthly.
6. Asana
Asana is a collaborative tool designed to help project managers plan, manage and organize scrum sprints. Project managers can create projects, assign tasks to team members, specify deadlines, track scrum sprint progress, and collaborate on the same platform.
You can attach files, compile reports, and set and track company goals. You can visually map out your projects on Asana’s interactive Timelines. It syncs with Gmail, Zoom, Splunk, NetScope, Jotform, Miro, Figma, Google Workspace, and Microsoft Teams.
With Gantt charts, lists, boards, and calendars at your disposal, you can organize your work the way you want on Asana. Its key features include:
- Workflow builder for upcoming sprints
- Desktop and mobile apps
- Project templates
- Customizable dashboards and templates
You can personalize your dashboards and keep track of task completion through percent-complete tracking. Asana has a free trial. Paid packages start from $10.99 per member monthly.
7. ProductBoard
ProductBoard is a customer-driven product management system provides a complete solution for product teams to understand user needs.
ProductBoard integrates into existing workflows and promotes company-wide collaboration. Its key features are:
- Build roadmaps
- Task ranking
- Progress monitoring
- Centralize feedback
- Customer ideation
- Idea and issue management
- Kanban board
With ProductBoard, you can track the time spent completing each task. It has tools to analyze productivity and other team performance data to better plan tasks and projects.
Remote team members can add notes to user feedback. ProductBoard keeps user data secure and compliant. Unfortunately, it has no free trial. Paid packages start from $20 per user monthly.
8. Aha
Aha has a suite of tools that seamlessly work together to turn raw concepts into new capabilities. It allows you to crowdsource ideas, spark creativity, and plan development. Training programs are provided via Aha Academy for those who want to become product development experts.
Its suite of tools includes Aha Create, Aha Ideas, Aha Roadmaps, and Aha Develop. Key features include:
- Custom workflows
- Kanban boards
- Customer ideation
- Gantt and Timeline views
- Due date tracking
Aha integrates with Jira, GitHub, Azure DevOps Server, Pivotal Tracker, Trello, FogBugz, Redmine, Zendesk, Salesforce, Google Analytics, and Slack. It has a free trial, after which packages start from $9 per user monthly billed annually.
9. Scrum-Mate
Scrum-Mate is an agile project management tool for software development teams and digital agencies. This sprint planning tool allows you to combine multiple projects into one team board. It lets you distribute sprints and project work across teams.
Scrum mate is a decent option for teams that use scrum frameworks. It is easy, responsive, and has an intuitive design. Key offerings include:
- Task management
- Calendar management
- Collaboration tools
Scrum-Mate has a mobile app for iOS. It integrates with Slack, Google Hangouts Chat, and GitHub. Unfortunately, it does not have a mobile app for Android. A 30-day free trial is available, after which packages begin at $29 monthly.
10. Monday
Monday is an open platform where anyone can create and shape the tools they need to run every aspect of their work. Organizations can use Monday to build whatever they need to improve team collaboration and business workflows.
Monday has industry-specific products like Monday Marketer, Monday Sales CRM, Monday Dev, Monday Projects, and Monday Work Management. All these tools are built on top of Monday’s Work OS. Key features include:
- Applicant tracking
- Approval workflow
- 360-degree feedback
- Agent management
- Annotations
- Real-time reports
You can easily track and report bugs while prioritizing each issue using color-coded labels. Monday has a free plan for up to two seats. Paid plans start from $8 for four seats monthly.
In Summary
Sprint planning tools allow collaborative planning of sprints among the scrum master, the product owner, and the product development team. A good tool can streamline scrum workflows and has team management, automation features, and integrations with other popular tools.
Our own tool, Tara, ticks these boxes. It supports team collaboration through @mentions, offers automation features to enhance your sprint planning workflows, and integrates with other tools, including Slack and GitHub. Don’t just take our word for it – more than 4,000 product development teams use Tara.
That said, when choosing software for sprint planning, remember to take time to look into the unique features of each platform, as discussed in this article. Then determine whether they align with your business needs. That will help you pick an effective sprint planning tool that’ll bring efficiency and success to your team 🚀
Happy sprinting!