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Weekly Build Planning

Purpose: Prioritize work in progress using feedback, risk, usage, and blockers.

When to use: Once per week during active capability work. Especially relevant once real users, source material, and operational constraints are involved.

Duration: 30-60 minutes

Inputs Required

  • Feedback from past week
  • Usage data
  • Current capability backlog
  • Owner and user availability

Agenda

1. Review Feedback (10 min)

What came in this week? Categorize:

  • Bugs: Things that are broken
  • Friction: Things that are annoying
  • Requests: Things users want

2. Review Usage Data (5 min)

Are people using it? What features? Any drop-off points?

3. Prioritize (15 min)

Stack rank what to work on. Consider:

  • Impact (how many users, how much pain)
  • Effort (quick win vs. big project)
  • Dependencies (what unblocks other work)

4. Commit Work (10 min)

Who is doing what this week? Be specific about owner, review path, and evidence needed.

5. Identify Blockers (5 min)

What could stop us? Surface it now, not Friday.

Outputs

  • Prioritized list for the week
  • Clear owners and review path
  • Known blockers (with owners)

Tips

  • Keep it short. If planning takes longer than doing, something's wrong.
  • Don't plan more than one week ahead. Things change too fast.
  • It's okay to say "not this week" to good ideas. Prioritization means saying no.
  • If the same feedback keeps coming up, it's not a feature request—it's a bug.
  • Usage data > opinions. If no one uses a feature, don't improve it.

The Pattern

Weekly rhythm, daily adjustments. Ship useful artifacts, get feedback, adjust. Keep the ceremony lighter than the work.

Build enabling tools as you go. If something slows the team down repeatedly, make it part of the operating kit.

See also: User Feedback Triage