If you use Notion for productivity, then you are probably familiar with the typical project management structure — Projects and Tasks. But there is actually a third component that highly efficient teams use to plan (and deliver) their work. I’m talking about Sprints in Notion. Sprints are incredibly powerful for getting things done, since they allow you to plan when you want to tackle a task (and constantly iterate to improve your planning). Having Sprints in Notion will not only help you plan tasks realistically but also manage them effectively and efficiently. And luckily, it’s fairly straightforward to implement Sprints in Notion if you know how. This article will cover everything you need to get started with Sprints in Notion (and if you don’t want to implement them yourself, then you can also download the free Sprints for Notion Template at the bottom of this post).
What’s the difference between a Sprint and a Project?
Sprints and Projects are similar because they both are containers for your actions or tasks. Projects group tasks based on their goals, while Sprints group tasks based on when you’re going to tackle them.
This second part (when are you going to do something) is often missing from traditional project management setups. Sure, you might have a bunch of due dates on your tasks, but that only indicates by when something has to be finished. Sprints are an easy solution that allow you to schedule your tasks over time to make sure they actually all get completed before the due date rolls around.
So, how do you structure Sprints within your workflow? There are a lot of options here, but if you’re just starting out, then I recommend using a two-week cycle.
Twice a month, you’ll plan the tasks for the upcoming 14 days.
Once this two-week cycle, or Sprint, is completed, you’ll review the past Sprint and plan for the next one.
Any incomplete tasks can be moved to the next Sprint or kept as backlog items.
This approach allows you and your team to plan for a relatively short time span, which makes it a lot more likely that you can actually follow through. Plus, after a few sprints, you’ll have learned a ton about your actual capacity and your next sprint planning will get a lot better.
Now that you know what Sprints are, let’s explore how to implement them in your Notion workspace.
How to implement Sprints in Notion from scratch
If you don’t have an existing project management system yet or just want to start over, then you can save yourself a lot of work by using Notion’s pre-built template. Besides being faster, this also allows you to use a hidden Notion functionality that isn’t available anywhere else — a ‘Complete Sprint’ button, which can really improve the workflow.
Don’t feel like building the system yourself? You can simply grab my finished Sprint template and level up your Notion game right away!
To get add Notion’s template as a starting point, create a New Page and name it Simple Sprints in Notion. Within the page, navigate to the Get Started section. Click on Templates, prompting a new window to appear.
On the left, you’ll find a variety of Notion templates (Built by Notion). Select the Issue Tracker (W/ Notion AI) template, then click Get template on the right.
This template was originally called “Projects, Tasks & Sprints”. The name has not been updated for all users, so if you’re unsure, look for a template that includes a Sprint Board like the one shown in the screenshot below.
Doing so will create the necessary databases for you to get started. The template includes multiple views, filters, and sample data, which may seem overwhelming at first, but you’ll soon grasp the functionality.
For the next step, move all databases to the new page you’ve created. Navigate to the sidebar and locate the Tasks database that was just added. Click on the three-dot menu, then choose Move to. Select the destination page — Simple Sprints in Notion.
Notion will prompt you to decide whether to move all related databases (Tasks, Projects, and Sprints) together. Select Move Together to move all three databases at once. That should only leave the Sprint board page behind, so locate it and move it as well.
Let’s analyse the structure of this simple Notion setup.
It consists of three databases — Tasks, Projects, and Sprints. The Tasks database contains tasks with a relation to Sprints and Projects. The Project database includes projects, while the Sprints database manages the total number of sprints.
However, the highlight of this template is the Sprint Board page, a dashboard showing tasks from the current sprint in a Kanban view, with the sub-grouping of Projects.
As mentioned previously, this also features the unique (and quite hidden) Complete Sprint button. Upon clicking, a popup appears with the following options for any tasks that remained open during the sprint:
- Next Sprint (choose the next sprint)
- Start and end dates (duration of the next sprint)
- Number of incomplete tasks (management of incomplete tasks)
Now that you understand the template’s structure, let’s optimise it for your needs.
By default, the template lacks functionality because it shows you all the information in siloed database views. That means users need to context switch a lot and can’t get all relevant information at a glance. There’s also no way to manage work in larger teams.
To fix these issues, you’ll create your own Sprint dashboard and add another database for your different departments (or skip the last step if you work on your own).
Step 1: Setting Up The Project Database View
Let’s start by maximising the page width to use the entire screen real estate by clicking in the top right corner of the page on the three dots and toggling on “Full Width”. It’s always a good idea to make the dashboard full-width to have more space for information.
Next, create a linked database by typing slash “/” and selecting the Linked view of database option. Choose the Projects database as the data source. Since you’re starting fresh, select “+ New empty view”.
For this view of the Projects database, choose the following settings:
- Use Gallery View
- Turn off Show database title
- Card Preview: None
- Card Size: Medium
You may want to display specific properties like Owner name, Completion bar, and Status to show more relevant information and increase the functionality of these cards, but be careful not to clutter them.
Now, apply a filter to display only the current and upcoming projects. Click on Filter and select where Status is To Do (Backlog) and In Progress (Planning, In progress, Paused). Leave out the Complete status since you don’t need completed projects here.
You can customize the styling further (View name, view icon, etc.), but let’s keep it simple for now. Let’s move on to creating the Tasks database view.
Step 2: Creating The Tasks Database View
On larger dashboards like this, I often recommend using toggles so that you can hide specific information and avoid information overload.
To do so, type / followed by h1 toggle heading to create a toggle heading. Name it “Tasks“. Then, click inside to continue building this section.
Similar to setting up the projects database, create a linked view of the Tasks database. You can start with the existing All Tasks view. you need to create two views of the Tasks database: one for open tasks and the other for due tasks.
For the Open Tasks view, configure the following settings:
- Filter: Where Status is not Complete (Done, Archive).
- Properties to show: Status, Assignee, Due, Priority, Tags, and Projects. (Customize as needed)
Duplicate the Open Tasks, choose a new icon (e.g., Calendar icon) for this view, and apply these filters:
- Where Status is not Complete (Done, Archive)
And,
- Due Start date is on or before today
That’s it. Your Tasks view for Sprints in Notion is all set.
Step 3: Creating A Kanban View For Your Projects
Now you are going to create another view of a Project database. Earlier, the project view only shows the current and upcoming projects. This time, it will be a full-fledged Kanban view of the project database to maximize the functionality of the dashboard.
Begin by creating a linked view of the Project database. Opt for the Board layout, and set Status as the Group by option. You now have a Kanban view of the project database. However, there is a minor issue: Notion by defualt hide empty groups by default in Board view. That won’t work in this case as you need to drag and drop the projects across different groups and statuses.
To solve this, navigate to Group by and toggle off Hide empty groups. Now, all statuses are visible in the Kanban view. You might also want to adjust the Sort to Manual to properly sort the statuses. For a visually appealing board, toggle on Color Columns, and voila! You now have a kanban view of your projects in Notion.
One thing to note here is if you’ve got a lot of projects going on, or you’ll be using this setup for a long time, you might have a long list of projects showing in the Kanban view. This would make the kanban board very long and less functional.
To address this, let’s set a filter to display only your most recent finished projects. To do so, add a new property called Last Edited Time. Simply access the three-dot menu of the view, click Properties, then + New Property, and select Last Edited Time.
For the filter, create an advanced filter and make the first filter into a group. Then, set the following criteria:
- Where Status is not Complete (Done, Cancelled)
Or,
- Last Edited Time is on or after One month ago
Similar to before, you can nest this Kanban view within a Toggle heading block to maintain a clean and minimal dashboard.
Step 4: Setting Up the Sprints in Notion
Let’s proceed to create a view of the Sprint database, just like you did for the previous ones. This time, you’ll take a shortcut and utilise the existing Sprint board dashboard.
Start by duplicating the Sprint Board page and move it inside a new Toggle Heading block. Then, click on the six-dot menu of the Sprint board page and select Turn into inline to reveal the Sprint board within the toggle heading block.
Now, you’ll see the Kanban view of the tasks from the current sprint as well as the useful Complete Sprint button.
Additionally, you can create a table view of the Sprints database to manage the sprints more efficiently. Simply create a linked database view of the sprints and choose a table as the layout option.
A couple of things to keep in mind with this Notion template:
Firstly, you can’t change the naming of the status property in the Sprint database due to its structure and functionality. Notion has locked them.
So, if you’re not fond of the current naming convention (e.g., Current, next, future, last, past, etc.), you’ll need to use the second method shown in this blog post and build your own setup.
Secondly, you can’t set Current as a Sprint status for more than one entry. If you need to change Sprint 2 to the Current sprint, ensure that Next as a sprint status is set to Sprint 2 before clicking on the Complete Sprint button. This action will automatically designate Sprint 2 as the current sprint status. Alternatively, you can first set the Sprint 1 status as Past and then designate Sprint 2 as Current.
Step 5: How To Add Custom Dashboards For Different Departments In Notion
If you use Notion with a larger organisation, then a single dashboard like this will quickly become cluttered. Luckily, Notion is a perfect tool to reduce the noise and show people only the information that’s relevant to them.
But in order to do so, we need to adjust this system and add in dashboards that are tailored to a specific department.
Now, you could simply duplicate this page and manually add filters for each department, but that’s not a particularly scalable setup. Instead, we can leverage database templates and self-referential filters to do the work for us.
First, create a new page and select Table as the starting point. For the data source, choose New Database and name it Departments (or your preferred name).
Add the following relations to the Department database:
- Tasks Database
- Projects Database
- Sprints Database
Make sure to toggle on the Show on Projects/Tasks/Sprints option while setting up the relations.
Now, add your departments or teams to the database, such as Marketing, Operations, Sales, Design, etc.
Now, return to the Tasks view and assign different tasks to different departments.
You can also group the tasks by departments. To do so, go to the three-dot menu of the Task view, select Group, and choose Departments. This is particularly useful if you want to get a quick, high-level overview over several departments at once.
Next, you need to create a template for the Department Dashboard.
To do so quickly, select everything you added to the main dashboard that we built out so far (the projects, tasks, and sprints views from the Home page) and copy them. In the Department database, click on the chevron-down menu beside New, then select New template. Name it “New Department” and give it an icon. Inside the template, paste the views you’ve created.
Lastly, set filters for each view of the database to display only the information relevant to certain departments. To do it, go to the Filters for each view and set “Departments contains New Department”. Repeat this for each view.
Initially, it requires some additional work, but once done, you can scale it to as many departments as needed. To see it in action, assign projects, tasks, and sprints to a department and apply the template.
Like magic, you’ll automatically get a dashboard filtered for only the projects, tasks and sprints that belong to a specific department.
If you’re looking for more Notion UI hacks that are great for companies, check out this article on how to show Notion properties inside a Notion page.
This method is highly scalable, allowing you to easily create separate dashboards for each department, regardless of the organisation’s size or number of departments.
Understanding the Template Workflow
To finish things, let’s quickly take a look at the core workflow for this template.
It’s quite straightforward. Imagine you have various projects, each has their own tasks, and these tasks are distributed across multiple sprints. Each sprint spans 2 weeks.
Every 14 days, you’ll plan out tasks for the upcoming sprint. Let’s say these tasks are designated for Sprint 1. Throughout Sprint 1, you’ll work on these tasks, with some possibly incomplete tasks.
At the end of Sprint 1, simply click on the Complete Sprint button. A popup will appear, allowing you to setup the next sprint, its start date, duration, and the status of any incomplete tasks from Sprint 1.
You now have the time to review your planning. Did you manage to (mostly) finish what you thought you would in two weeks? Or were you far off? How can you use this knowledge to make the planning for the next sprint more efficient?
Then, the new sprint (Sprint 2) starts and you continue the cycle.
How To Implement Sprints In Notion With An Existing System
Perhaps you already have a system for your company or you can’t live with certain limitations of the official sprint template, like the locked in naming conventions. Whatever the reason, you can also easily integrate Sprints into your existing Notion workspace by building a Sprint Database from scratch.
Let’s walk through how to do it. You’ll miss the Complete Sprint button functionality, but the rest remains the same.
Start by creating a new database called “Sprints”.
Next, add the following properties to the Sprint database:
- Relation Property: Set the relation to the Tasks database. (Toggle on Show on Tasks)
- Status: Customize the statuses according to your preference.
- Date: Use this to define the duration of the sprint.
- Formula Property: This will showcase the Sprint progress bar.
Use the following Notion formula to display the progress of the sprint:
prop(“Tasks”).filter(current.prop(“Status”) !=”Done”).length().divide(prop(“Tasks”).length()).multiply(100).round().divide(100)
Don’t forget to set the Number format to Percentage and choose Show as Bar.
This straightforward formula divides the number of completed tasks by the total number of tasks, displaying the result as both a percentage and a progress bar.
Next, for the Tasks database, ensure the following properties are present:
- Projects (Relation to Projects Database)
- Sprints (Relation to Sprints database)
- Status Property
- Formula property (To filter out the tasks from the ongoing sprint only).
For this situation, use the following Notion formula to identify tasks from the current sprint:
prop("Sprints").first().prop("Status")=="In progress"This Notion formula will display as a checkbox. The box will be checked only if the tasks are assigned to a sprint whose Status set to In progress. You can label this formula property as ‘Current Sprint’.
You can create a new view (a Kanban view for example) for the Tasks database that will only show tasks from the running sprint. In this board view, simply add a filter — where the Current Sprint checkbox is Checked. This ensures that tasks from the ongoing sprint are displayed. You can apply this filter to any layout of the Tasks database.
Get Your Free Notion Template
There you have it! You now understand the concept of sprints and how to seamlessly integrate them into your Notion workspace. While the traditional project management structure is good for most users, Sprints in Notion allows you to really bring your project management setup to the next level and maximise productivity, especially within team environments.
You can download this Notion Template plus another 21+ other free templates here:
