How to Set Up a Sprint Review Process in Linear
A sprint review in Linear is more than closing out a cycle — it is the moment when completed work is shared with stakeholders and the next cycle is informed by what was learned. Linear's cycle analytics, project views, and shareable issue lists give EMs the raw material for a sprint review that is brief, data-driven, and actually influences what gets prioritized next.
This guide covers how to structure a sprint review process in Linear: what to prepare, how to run the session, and how to capture the outcomes in a way that feeds the next sprint.
Step-by-step guide
Set up Linear Cycles for your team
In Linear team Settings → Cycles, enable Cycles and set your sprint length (typically 2 weeks). Configure the cycle start day to match your sprint cadence. Linear automatically creates the next cycle when the current one ends. All issues in the cycle appear in the team's Cycle view. Each issue marked Done within the cycle contributes to the completed story points count in cycle analytics.
Prepare the review report from Linear Cycle analytics
Navigate to your team's Cycles view and select the completed cycle. Linear shows: total issues completed, total story points completed, issues started but not completed (carried over), and a chart of completion velocity over the cycle. Export this as the quantitative section of your sprint review. Add context: what was the sprint goal? How many of the sprint's committed issues shipped? What was deferred and why?
Create a demo playlist from completed issues
In the completed cycle view, filter to issues of type "Feature" with status "Done." Create a Notion page or slide deck with the list of shipped features, each with a screenshot or screen recording of the working feature. For UI features, use Loom to record a 60-second demo. For backend changes, show the impact in a dashboard or metric chart. Paste the Linear issue URL next to each demo so stakeholders can see the original ticket. This is the demo section of the sprint review.
Share the sprint review with stakeholders
In Linear, go to the completed cycle and click "Share." Linear generates a shareable URL with a read-only view of the cycle showing completed and in-progress issues. Send this URL to stakeholders before the review meeting with a 3-sentence written summary: what shipped, what was deferred, and what the key decision or learning was this sprint. Stakeholders can review async before the meeting — the review session then focuses on discussion, not information transfer.
Capture action items in the next cycle
During the review, any action item that comes out of stakeholder feedback or retrospective discussion gets created as a Linear issue immediately. Assign it to the next cycle before leaving the meeting. Use the Linear mobile app to create issues on the spot during the meeting. This closes the loop: feedback from the review becomes an issue in the next sprint rather than a Slack message that gets lost.
Common mistakes
Sprint reviews that are status updates instead of demos
A sprint review where engineers describe what they built ("I completed the user authentication refactor") is a missed opportunity. Show working software: demo the feature, show the metric that changed, display the before and after. Stakeholders remember what they see, not what they hear. Require a demo artifact (screen recording, live demo, or before/after screenshot) for every feature presented.
Reviewing only shipped items and ignoring deferred work
What was deferred and why is as important as what shipped. If 3 issues were consistently moved from sprint to sprint, that pattern deserves discussion in the review. Use Linear cycle analytics to show the carryover rate and discuss the root cause. Hiding deferred work creates a false picture of team velocity and prevents the process improvements that would reduce it.
Sprint review with no clear owner or agenda
A sprint review without a facilitator becomes a free-form status meeting. Designate a rotating facilitator (PM or EM alternating) who owns the agenda: 5 minutes for metrics, 20 minutes for demos, 10 minutes for retrospective input, 5 minutes for action items. Hard stop at 45 minutes. Anything that needs deeper discussion gets a follow-up meeting, not extra time in the review.
Tips
Create a Linear template for a "Sprint Review" issue type that gets added to the cycle automatically at cycle creation — this issue becomes the agenda document with embedded Linear issue links and the cycle analytics screenshot
Use Linear's integration with Slack to auto-post a sprint review summary to your team channel when the cycle closes: include completed issue count, story points, and a link to the shareable cycle view — this creates ambient awareness without requiring everyone to attend the review
Set a cycle goal in Linear (Settings → Cycles → Goal for each cycle) that captures the sprint theme in one sentence — the goal appears at the top of the cycle view and gives stakeholders the "why" behind the sprint's issue list before they review the individual tickets
How Vantage helps
Sprint reviews are when product decisions get validated or challenged by stakeholder feedback. Vantage captures these decisions: when a sprint review produces a change in direction or a new requirement, adding it to Vantage as a PRD update ensures it flows into the next cycle's ticket generation rather than getting lost in a Slack thread or a Notion meeting note that no one reads again.