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Rituals for hypergrowth: An inside look at how YouTube scaled
Rituals for hypergrowth: An inside look at how YouTube scaled
Planning cadence
Weekly cadence
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Implementation

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Sprint planning

An intentionally lightweight goal-setting process.
A key aspect of the YouTube model was that our deep strategy discussions would happen every six months as we did strategic planning. That meant that our “sprint planning” was intentionally very lightweight.
We did this process at YouTube in a very complex set of spreadsheets with a lot of appscript to try to simulate multiple editable views. The below template accomplishes a similar goal.
You can replicate this process for you team by clicking this button to
copy this doc
⁠
and then this button to
clear sample data
⁠
.
A few key notes:
Teams: To get started, add your
Teams
⁠
into the table below.
Pro tip: This template is meant to be used standalone, but if you are using the
Matrix planning and allocation
⁠
template as well, you can remap the Team column in Sprint Goals below to map to your list of Investment Areas
Goals: Each team then adds their
Sprint goals
⁠
.
Note: Goals here were meant to be concrete and measurable. Because of the fast frequency, sometimes they will be intermediate milestones before a full ship or coordination milestones — "Team A will get X ready so that team B can do Y in the next sprint."
Pro tip: If you are also using the
Big Rock $100 prioritization
⁠
, feel free to add a lookup column to Sprint Goals to track which Big Rocks they are associated with.
Dependencies: As part of filling in
Sprint goals
⁠
, teams can indicate if a goal depends on another team.
The dependency model here is intentionally light. It is straightforward to add workflow — like asking for and accepting dependencies or adding the ability to depend on a specific goal — but I found it best to start with something much simpler and see if that is necessary.
Progress and scoring: As the sprint progresses, teams periodically update the progress for each goal in
Sprint goals
⁠
.
Note that the colors flow through to the chips in the
Teams
⁠
table which makes that a very digestible summary.
⁠
Sprint goals
0
Team
Goal
Team(s) it's dependent on
Progress
Team 1
Increase X by Y%
Team 4
000
100
Get X ready so that we can do Y next sprint
​
000
100
Team 2
Ship X feature
​
000
95
Increase X by Y%
Team 1
000
100
Team 3
Improve CSAT score by X%
Team 5
000
52
$XX in ad spend
​
000
75
Team 4
Ship X feature
​
000
100
Improve view time by X hours
Team 5
000
50
Team 5
Decrease buffer time by X%
​
000
25
Increase X by Y%
​
000
100
⁠

Teams
0
Name
Team goals
Depdendencies
1
Team 1
Increase X by Y%
Get X ready so that we can do Y next sprint
Increase X by Y%
2
Team 2
Ship X feature
Increase X by Y%
​
3
Team 3
Improve CSAT score by X%
$XX in ad spend
​
4
Team 4
Ship X feature
Improve view time by X hours
Increase X by Y%
5
Team 5
Decrease buffer time by X%
Increase X by Y%
Improve CSAT score by X%
Improve view time by X hours
There are no rows in this table
⁠

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