Free template

Free weekly review template — close the week with a real whiteboard.

BoardSnap is an iOS app that converts whiteboard photos into clean summaries and action items in about ten seconds. This weekly review template structures a 20-minute Friday ritual — what shipped, what didn't, what you learned, and what carries to next week — on a board you snap and keep.

Download on the App Store Free to start. Pro from $9.99/mo or $69.99/yr.

When to run this

Run this every Friday afternoon — or Thursday if Fridays are chaotic. The weekly review is the bookend to the weekly priorities: you start Monday with a board, and you close Friday with a board. The habit compounds: after a month, you have a searchable archive of every week's plans and outcomes.

It also works as a manager's tool — run the review as a brief team session before the weekend, and the BoardSnap output serves as the week's status update without a separate report.

The structure

What shipped

Write every completed task, shipped feature, or delivered commitment from the past week. This section feels good to write. Write more than you think — you did more than you remember. Looking at what shipped resets the mental energy for the next section.

What didn't ship

Write everything that was planned or in progress but didn't cross the finish line. No blame — just facts. List the item and the reason it's still open. This section fuels the next week's planning.

What you learned

One to three honest observations about the week. A pattern in what keeps blocking progress. A tool that saved an hour. A meeting that should have been an email. The learning section is what makes the weekly review a compounding practice — not just a status check.

Carry-forward

From the 'what didn't ship' list: which items move to next week, which items get deprioritized, and which items get deleted entirely? Be ruthless. If something has been on the carry-forward list for three weeks, it's probably not actually a priority.

How to run it

  1. Schedule 20 minutes on Fridays

    Put it in the calendar. Call it 'Weekly review' and block the last 20 minutes before you shut down. If it's not scheduled, it won't happen — and without the review, the weekly priorities ritual loses its feedback loop.

  2. Start with what shipped

    Write everything completed. Start positive. This isn't performance theatre — it's accurate accounting. The people who think they had an unproductive week are usually wrong; they just didn't write it down.

  3. Write what didn't ship factually

    List the items without editorializing. Don't write 'failed to ship X' — write 'X didn't ship because Y.' The because is the insight. If you can't write the because, you don't understand the bottleneck.

  4. Extract one learning per pattern

    Look at the 'what didn't ship' list. Is there a pattern? Meetings eating focus time? Dependencies arriving late? Context-switching? Write the pattern as a learning, not a complaint.

  5. Decide the carry-forward explicitly

    For each unshipped item: does it move to next week's priorities, or does it get cut? Make the decision out loud. Carrying over every item indefinitely produces a list, not a plan.

  6. Snap with BoardSnap

    BoardSnap reads all four sections and produces a clean retrospective summary. Completed items are marked done, unshipped items are classified as open, and the learnings and carry-forwards become next week's input.

Why weekly reviews on a whiteboard + BoardSnap is better than digital

Weekly reviews written in a journal or Notion page are usually incomplete — you remember the last two days and forget what you shipped on Tuesday. A whiteboard weekly review covers the full week because you drew the weekly priorities on Monday and can reference that board.

BoardSnap stores both boards in the same project. The Monday priorities and the Friday review form a matched pair — what you planned versus what actually happened. Over a quarter, these pairs are more useful than any sprint metrics report.

Frequently asked

How long should a weekly review take?

20 minutes for individuals. 30 minutes for teams. If it takes longer, you're planning next week instead of reviewing this week — those are different exercises. Keep the review backward-looking and the planning forward-looking.

What if I didn't do the weekly priorities at the start of the week?

Do the review anyway. Write what shipped from memory. The review is still useful without the starting board — it just requires more recall. Over time, the pairing of priorities + review is what makes both valuable.

Can a manager use BoardSnap to aggregate weekly reviews from a team?

Yes. Each team member snaps their own review into a shared BoardSnap project. The project collects all the boards — the manager can review each one or use BoardSnap's AI chat to ask 'What did the team ship this week?' and get a synthesized answer.

Is BoardSnap free?

The free tier includes one project and 30 boards. Pro is $9.99/month or $69.99/year for unlimited boards, projects, and AI chat.

Run your next weekly review and BoardSnap will summarize it.

No exporting, no transcription. Snap the board, get the action plan.

Free · 1 project, 30 boards Pro $9.99/mo · everything unlimited Pro $69.99/yr · save 42%
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