Gotta Plan Them All | The Sprint Name Generator (Pokémon-Inspired)
Pokémon is a registered trademark of Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo or The Pokémon Company.
By: Kiko Iwamizu
A Wild Idea Appears!
It all started one hot summer night in DC. We were out grabbing dinner during a CTA retreat where I happened to sit next to Cheska, a product manager from the PAD team. While we were waiting for our food, we got on the topic of sprint names. Their engineering team had officially run out of Mario Kart race courses (shout out to my all time favorite, Rainbow Road!).
I mentioned that our team had been thinking about naming sprints after Pokémon instead. There are so many that it feels effectively infinite. I even did the math: with 1,010 Pokémon (at the time I started working on the tool) and a two week sprint cadence, a single team could go for almost 39 years before repeating a name!
Naturally, I offered for their team to take our idea and use Pokémon too.
Then we paused…Because if two teams are both using Pokémon, it is only a matter of time before you end up with the same sprint name and suddenly “the Gengar sprint” is not a universally understood thing.
We immediately started brainstorming a lightweight tool that could (1) track sprint name history, (2) prevent name collisions across teams, and (3) make the reveal fun, in a “Who’s That Pokémon?” commercial break kind of way.
And that is how the Pokémon-inspired sprint naming tool was born.
Sprint Planning Needs Some Spark
Sprint planning is important, but it can also be repetitive. Many teams already have the hard parts handled (e.g., scope, priorities, capacity). What often goes missing is the small burst of energy that makes a new sprint feel like a real reset.
We wanted something playful that still gets the job done. A tiny ritual that keeps people engaged, builds shared team language, and makes collaboration feel easier. And yes, during spooky season we absolutely filter to Ghost types 👻. Because if you are going to do this, you might as well go big or go to Pallet Town (or マサラタウン in Japanese). Now, when we wrap up our sprint ritual, you can actually hear it: cheering, guessing, dramatic reveals, and a lot of laughter.
What We Actually Built
The Pokémon-inspired sprint naming tool is a lightweight web app that randomly generates sprint names using data from the PokéAPI, then saves it to the sprint history log so teams can reference past sprints without confusion.
It also supports what we started calling Team Mode. Instead of everyone sharing one big list of sprint names, each team can keep its own sprint history and settings. That way PAD can have their sprint history, our team can have ours, and we can still share the same Pokémon universe without accidentally picking the same sprint name at the same time.
You can either let it be a surprise encounter or hand pick your sprint Pokémon. Filters like generation and type make it easy to match the moment, like ice types for the winter season (right now, our team is in sprint Vanillite)!
How It Evolved Over Time
The best part is that it did not stay “my silly tool.” Once both teams started using it, people began sending ideas. Could we add a manual feature? Could we add more filters? Could we rename the teams? Could we make these instructions more clear?
The feedback loop is what made the project feel like a team ritual rather than a novelty. It became one more small way we care for each other, keep engagement up, and build a shared culture across teams.
Your Turn to Plan Them All!
To explore the tool and use it for your teams, check out the public repo in GitHub here: https://github.com/akikoiwamizu/pokemon-sprint-generator
If you fork it and add your own flair, new filters, new themes, new reveal styles, let us know! Sprint planning will always be serious work, so we might as well make the closing scene a little more fun.
Pokémon is a registered trademark of Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo or The Pokémon Company.
