/cm:sprint — Marketing Sprint Planning

Plan a focused 2-week marketing sprint with clear deliverables.

What It Does

Structures your marketing work into time-boxed sprints with defined goals, task breakdowns, and success criteria. Prevents scope creep and ensures marketing ships, not just plans.

Time Investment

20-30 minutes (planning session)

Process

1. Review Context

Before planning, gather:

• What did last sprint accomplish? (If not first sprint)
• Current business priorities — what matters most right now?
• Any deadlines or external dependencies?
• Available capacity — how many hours/week for marketing?

2. Set Sprint Goal

One sentence: What is this sprint about?

Good examples:

• "Launch positioning and homepage copy for ProductX"
• "Build email nurture sequence for trial users"
• "Establish SEO content pipeline with 4 published posts"
• "Run competitive analysis and update positioning"

Bad examples:

• "Do marketing" (too vague)
• "Redesign everything" (too ambitious)
• "Post on social" (no outcome defined)

3. Define Deliverables

List 3-5 concrete deliverables that prove the sprint goal is met.

Rules:

• Each deliverable must be a specific artifact (doc, page, campaign, etc.)
• Total estimated time must fit within available capacity
• If it doesn't fit → cut scope, don't extend timeline

4. Break Into Tasks

For each deliverable, list the tasks:

## Deliverable 1: [Name]

- [ ] Task 1 — [skill to use] — est. Xh
- [ ] Task 2 — est. Xh  
- [ ] Task 3 — est. Xh
- [ ] Review & ship — est. 30m

5. Schedule the Sprint

Week 1: Research & Draft

• Day 1-2: Research tasks
• Day 3-4: First drafts
• Day 5: Review, feedback, iterate

Week 2: Polish & Ship

• Day 1-2: Revisions, finalize
• Day 3-4: Ship deliverables
• Day 5: Sprint retro → /cm:retro

6. Define Success Criteria

How will you know this sprint was successful?

• [ ] All deliverables shipped (or consciously descoped)
• [ ] Quality bar met (not just "done" but "good")
• [ ] Learnings documented via /cm:compound
• [ ] Next sprint backlog updated

Output

## Marketing Sprint [#N] — [Start Date] to [End Date]

### Sprint Goal
[One sentence]

### Deliverables
1. [Deliverable] — [Status: Not Started / In Progress / Done]
2. [Deliverable] — [Status]
3. [Deliverable] — [Status]

### Capacity
- Available: X hours/week × 2 weeks = X hours total
- Committed: X hours
- Buffer: X hours (20% recommended)

### Daily Tasks
[Broken down by day/week]

### Success Criteria
- [ ] ...
- [ ] ...

When to Run

• Every 2 weeks (at sprint boundary)
• After /cm:audit identifies priorities
• When starting marketing on a new product

Related Workflows

• /cm:standup — Daily check-in during sprint
• /cm:eod — End-of-day during sprint
• /cm:retro — At sprint end
• /cm:compound — Document learnings

Common Mistakes

• Overcommitting (plan for 60-70% capacity, leave room for surprises)
• No sprint goal (just a task list isn't a sprint)
• Skipping the retro (you lose the compounding benefit)
• Changing scope mid-sprint (note it, do it next sprint)