The "Weekly Preview"

The Weekly Preview will be the backbone of your team’s productivity system. This is where the team will review its current workload and identify their Weekly Big 3, which will be the top three priorities for the week. You’ll also review upcoming deadlines and other open initiatives to identify everything else that needs to get done this week.

Setup

• Schedule a team meeting to do the preview. Most likely, the meeting should be scheduled at the beginning of the new work week (e.g. Monday morning) or at the end of the prior work week (e.g. Friday afternoon).

  • Most teams will need approximately one (1) hour to complete the exercise. Smaller teams may need only 30 minutes, while larger teams may need up to two (2) hours. And of course, the size and busyness of your task list matters here too.

  • If this is your first weekly preview, you should consider scheduling extra time.

• Configure a Jira board for viewing the team’s task list. See here for a list of recommended configurations.

Steps

1. Identify one person to share their screen for everyone else. Display the team’s task list in Jira.

2. Filter on the “@this-month” horizon label. This will limit the task list to your objectives for the current month. If you’re using the recommended board configurations, use the “Weekly Preview” quick filter.

   1. NOTE: If this is your first time using ATP, then you will not have any horizon labels set. In that case, leave your task list unfiltered this time.

3. If you’ve completed the monthly preview, the top of your board will display your monthly goals. Click on the first goal to view its Details View (as either a modal or sidebar).

   1. If you haven’t completed a monthly preview, then skip to Step 5.

   2. Select to view the Agile Task Planner panel.

   3. Determine if any progress needs to be made toward this goal during the current week:

      1. If the goal should be completed this week, then change the Horizon to “This Week”.

      2. If only a chunk of the goal should be completed, then create one or more subprojects to represent the smaller-sized outcomes you plan to achieve this week.

      3. If no work is expected to be done on this goal, then leave it as-is until the next preview session.

   4. If there are existing subprojects from prior weekly previews, then review them and update as necessary (update workflow status, horizon value, etc.).

4. Repeat Steps 3(a) through 3(d) for the remaining monthly goals.

5. Now, repeat the same steps (3(a) through 3(d) for the tasks in your Urgent swim lane. These are tasks with due dates in the next two (2) weeks.

6. Review the remainder of the displayed tasks. Rank the tasks in order of importance. Do this for all columns (workflow states) that represent In Progress or To Do states.

7. Now review each task, working right-to-left, top-to-bottom:

   1. Click on the task to view its Details View (as either a modal or a sidebar)

   2. Select to view the Agile Task Planner panel.

   3. Review the task’s horizon, and update as necessary:

      1. If the task should be completed this week, then update the horizon to be “This Week”.

      2. If the task is no longer expected to be completed this month, the change the horizon to “This Quarter”, “This Year”, or “Someday/Maybe”.

      3. If a subset of the task will be completed this week, then create a new subproject with a horizon of “This Week”.

      4. If no work is expected to be done on this task this week, but it is still expected to be done this month, then leave the task as-is until the next weekly preview.

   4. If there are existing subprojects from prior weekly previews, then review them and update as necessary (update workflow status, horizon value, etc.).

8. Review the team’s calendar for the next 2 to 4 weeks to see if there are any upcoming events to prepare for. If there are, create new tasks in your task list, and assign horizon values and subprojects as necessary.

9. Have a brief brainstorming session to determine if there is any missing work that should be represented on the board for this week. Ideally, all of the team’s obligations and expected outcomes should be represented here.

10. Now, it’s time to identify the team’s Weekly Big 3. These will be the top 3 items that absolutely must get done for the team to have a successful week. At least one of the Weekly Big 3 should support a monthly goal. The other two may also support goals, or they may support upcoming deadlines and/or other important things that need to get done this week.

    1. Review your monthly goals. If any goal has a subproject that should be a Weekly Big 3, then toggle the goal flag on that subproject.

    2. If you haven’t flagged three items yet, then change your filter to the “@This-Week” label (Daily Preview quick filter). Review all the tasks identified to be completed this week and flag the most valuable or important one(s) as a Weekly Big 3 until you have 3 items selected. The selected Weekly Big 3 will be displayed in your Goals swim lane.