Scrum Board Excel Template: Sprint Columns That Work
Set up a scrum board Excel template with sprint columns, story points, sprint velocity, and a retrospective record book.
Scrum adds ceremony that a plain kanban board does not need to track — a sprint boundary, a goal, and a retrospective. A scrum board excel template should reflect that rhythm, not just relabel "To-Do" as "Sprint Backlog" and stop there.
Key takeaway: A scrum board earns its name when it can answer "what was our sprint goal, what shipped, and how does our velocity compare to last time." A kanban board with a date stamp is not the same thing.
Where this fits in the kanban cluster
This article assumes you already have lanes set up and are adding sprint-specific structure. For the wider comparison of options, start with the Agile Kanban Board Excel guide.
Set sprint-specific columns, not just status
Sprint Backlog, In Progress, In Review, and Done is a common scrum column set — more granular than a basic kanban board because "In Review" separates work that is finished coding from work the team has actually accepted. Add a Sprint field (a number or date range) to every card so cards belong to a specific sprint rather than floating indefinitely between one iteration and the next.
[TABLE: Scrum-specific fields to add]
| Field | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Sprint number | Groups cards by iteration |
| Story points | Sizes work for velocity math |
| Sprint goal (header cell) | Keeps the team aligned on intent |
| Carryover flag | Marks work that slipped to the next sprint |
Size work with story points, not hours
Story points (1, 2, 3, 5, 8) estimate relative effort rather than exact hours, which tends to hold up better across a team with different work speeds. Keep the scale small and consistent sprint over sprint so velocity comparisons actually mean something.
Warning: Re-scoring old cards after the fact to make velocity look better defeats the purpose. Record the estimate once, at planning, and leave it — the retrospective is where you discuss why it was wrong.
Calculate sprint velocity automatically
With Sprint number and Story points as real columns, a SUMIFS formula totals completed points per sprint. Put this on a Sprint Velocity sheet and chart three to five sprints so the trend, not a single number, drives the next planning conversation.
Product highlight: Compare planned points to completed points per sprint, not just completed points alone — a wide, consistent gap usually means the team is over-committing at planning, not under-performing during the sprint.
Keep a Sprint Record Book for retrospectives
Log the sprint number, goal, velocity, carryover count, and a short retro note (what went well, what to change) on a separate sheet. This is what makes a scrum board excel template different from a generic kanban board — it treats the sprint as the unit of review, not just the individual card.
The PlanoNest Agile Kanban Board Excel template includes exactly this pairing: a Kanban Board sheet you can adapt to scrum-style columns, a Sprint Velocity sheet with automatic totals, and a Sprint Record Book for retrospective notes — all in one Start Here-guided workbook, available in Excel and Google Sheets as a one-time purchase with instant digital download.
Run the ceremonies the spreadsheet supports
Planning means assigning a sprint number and points to new cards. The daily check means filtering to "In Progress" and confirming WIP limits. Review means moving accepted cards to Done and flagging slipped ones as carryover. Retrospective means logging the sprint's row in the record book before the next sprint's planning starts. The spreadsheet does not run the meeting, but it should have every field the meeting needs already sitting there. Teamhood's guide to building a kanban board in Excel is a useful reference if you want to see how a dedicated agile tool describes the same base structure.
Handling more than one sprint cadence
Some teams run one-week and two-week sprints for different workstreams at once, or need to plan two sprints ahead during a busy quarter. Keep the Sprint number field simple — an incrementing integer rather than an embedded date — and store the actual date range in a separate reference cell or small lookup table. That keeps your velocity formulas counting by sprint number cleanly, without needing to parse or compare dates inside the same formula.
Bring the board into the stand-up itself
Freeze the header row, sort by Status then Owner before the meeting starts, and filter the view to the current sprint number so cards from three sprints ago do not clutter the conversation. A scrum board that requires scrolling past finished work to find today's status defeats the purpose of having a board in the first place.
Avoid turning velocity into a performance score
Velocity is a planning input for the team, not an individual scorecard. Publishing per-person velocity numbers tends to encourage inflated estimates rather than honest ones, since nobody wants to look slow on a shared sheet. Keep the Sprint Velocity sheet at the team level, and use the Sprint Record Book's retro notes — not the point totals — to talk through individual blockers or support needs.
Keep the record book short enough that people actually fill it in
Three or four fields per sprint — goal, velocity, carryover count, one retro note — is enough. A record book that demands a full paragraph of reflection per sprint quickly becomes the field nobody updates, which defeats the entire point of keeping a history at all.
Aligning the board with your team's definition of done
A scrum board only tells the truth if "Done" means the same thing every time a card lands there. Write your definition of done once — tested, reviewed, deployed, whatever applies to your team — and put it in the Start Here tab or a header comment rather than trusting everyone to remember a conversation from three sprints ago. Cards that get marked Done inconsistently are the most common reason a velocity number stops matching what the team actually feels like it accomplished.
Adjust the columns if your team already uses different names
Some teams call the columns Sprint Backlog, Doing, and Shipped instead of the wording used here — the exact labels matter less than the underlying behavior: a fixed set of stages, a sprint number on every card, and a size on every card. If your team already has vocabulary it trusts, keep it and map the fields described in this guide onto those existing names rather than forcing a rename that nobody asked for.
Keep the Sprint Record Book short enough that someone will actually fill it in. Two or three sentences after each sprint beat a blank form with twelve unused fields. The habit matters more than the formatting: date the entry, note the velocity, and write one concrete change for the next cycle so the workbook becomes a memory, not a decorative tab.
A short setup checklist
- Add a Sprint number field to every card.
- Use a small, consistent story point scale.
- Split "In Progress" into "In Progress" and "In Review" if code review is a distinct step for your team.
- Build a Sprint Velocity sheet with a SUMIFS total per sprint.
- Log every finished sprint's goal, velocity, and retro note in a Sprint Record Book.
FAQ
What is the difference between a kanban board and a scrum board in Excel?
A kanban board tracks continuous flow of work; a scrum board adds a sprint boundary, story points, and a sprint goal so the team can review a fixed period rather than an open-ended stream.
How do I calculate sprint velocity in Excel?
Add a Sprint number and Story points column to each card, then use a SUMIFS formula to total the points marked Done within a given sprint number.
Should every card have a story point value?
Yes, if you want a usable velocity number. Cards without a size cannot be counted toward the sprint total, which understates how much the team actually completed.
What belongs in a sprint retrospective record?
At minimum: the sprint number, the goal, the velocity, how many cards carried over, and one or two notes on what to change next sprint.
Disclosure
PlanoNest sells this template. Links to PlanoNest products and collections point to our own digital template shop.
About the author
Robin is the independent maker behind PlanoNest, creating practical Excel, Google Sheets, and Notion templates for clearer day-to-day operations.
