6 Free Agile Project Management Templates

Agile replaces the fixed plan with a prioritized backlog, short fixed-length sprints and a feedback loop at the end of each one. The documents are fewer and lighter than in a traditional project, but they are not optional: a backlog that is not ordered, a sprint without a goal, stories without acceptance criteria and a retrospective with no actions are the usual reasons an agile team delivers slowly and cannot say why.

The six templates here are the working set for a Scrum or Scrum-like team: a product backlog, a sprint backlog with capacity, a user story card with acceptance criteria, a sprint burndown that charts itself, a retrospective record with actions, and a release plan that forecasts from velocity. They work in Excel for teams without a tool and as a reference format for teams moving between tools.

Download the templates

The six templates

A backlog is an ordered list, not a pile

The product backlog works only if it is ranked. Every item has a rank, a value and a size, and the top of the list is refined enough to start. Items that nobody can size are not ready. The sprint backlog takes the top items up to the team's capacity, with a sprint goal in one sentence that says what the sprint is for; a sprint with no goal is a to-do list and gets interrupted accordingly.

Story cards carry acceptance criteria in Given, When, Then form. Those criteria are the definition of done for the story, and they are what the deliverable review checklist becomes in an agile team.

Burndown, velocity and honest forecasts

The burndown is a daily plot of points remaining against the ideal line; the Excel sheet draws the ideal from the sprint total. Its value is the shape, not the number: a flat line for three days means stories are stuck, a cliff on the last day means work is being closed in a rush. Velocity is the points completed per sprint averaged over the last three, and the release plan divides the remaining scope by it to forecast how many sprints are needed. That forecast is the most honest schedule most projects ever have, because it is built from what the team actually did.

Do not compare velocity between teams or use it as a performance measure; points are a team's private unit and inflate the moment they are judged. The sprint planning templates go further into capacity and commitment.

Retrospectives that change something

• Three columns: went well, did not, will try. The third is the point.
• Every "will try" becomes an action with an owner and a due date, reviewed at the next retrospective.
• One or two actions per sprint; a retro that produces nine actions produces none.
• Rotate the facilitator and keep the record in the template so patterns show across sprints.
• Separate the retrospective from the review; stakeholders attend the review, the team alone attends the retro.

Key takeaways

• Agile needs fewer documents, not none: an ordered backlog, a sprint backlog with a goal, stories with acceptance criteria, a burndown, a retro with actions, a velocity-based release plan.
• A backlog item is ready when it has a rank, a value, a size and acceptance criteria.
• Forecast releases from the last three sprints' velocity, and never use velocity to judge people.
• Retrospectives earn their time only when the actions are owned and reviewed.