Weekly Sprint Prep/Jam
Note: The video covers material not in the guide below — please watch in full.
Action Step
Complete this before moving on.
On your next Thursday afternoon, use the sprint jam time block to review your Teamwork board across all clients. Make sure every task dated for next week has an estimated time set. Then remind your senior engineer on Friday to review those estimates and adjust based on actual scope before Monday's sprint meeting.
The Thursday Time Block
The Weekly Sprint Jam is a recurring time block on Thursday afternoons — currently at 3pm Arizona time. It is dedicated focus time for architects to start planning next week's sprint.
The idea is simple: customers cannot book over this time with Clockwise links or any other calendar tool. It is your protected window to look ahead, review boards, and get organized before the week ends.
Cam encourages putting on some headphones and music during this time. The sprint jam is about getting into a focused rhythm to set up the following week.
What to Do During the Sprint Jam
The primary focus is reviewing the tasks on your Teamwork board across all clients. Look at what is dated for next week and make sure the sprint is clean.
Check whether anything should be removed — tasks that were deleted, deprioritized, or pushed further out. Make sure nothing is sitting in next week's sprint that does not belong there. The goal is to walk into Monday's sprint meeting with full confidence in what is on the board.
Estimated Time Is the Big One
The single most important thing to get right during the sprint jam is estimated time on every task. Each task assigned for next week should have a time estimate set — both for items you are assigning to yourself as the architect and items going to your engineers.
Set estimates based on your best understanding of the scope and how quickly your engineers execute similar work. This is not an exact science, but having a number there is what makes everything else work — capacity planning, sprint commitments, and the AI end-of-week recaps all depend on it.
The Friday Engineering Review
After you set estimates on Thursday, the next step happens on Friday. Ask your senior engineer to review everything on next week's sprint. They should look at the scope you have provided and put their own forecast on the estimated time.
Nobody knows how long a technical task will take better than the engineer doing the work. If you estimated one hour but the engineer sees five or six hours based on the actual scope, that misalignment would derail the sprint. Getting engineering sign-off on estimates by Friday prevents you from walking into Monday's meeting and committing to things that are not possible.
Why This Matters
Without the sprint jam, it is easy to get sucked into closing out the current week and never look ahead. Thursday afternoon gives you that buffer — one business day before the week ends — to shift your attention forward.
The estimated times you set here also feed directly into the AI end-of-week recaps that go out on Fridays. Those recaps highlight next week's focus, so having accurate estimates in place before the recap runs means the customer gets a reliable preview of what is coming.
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