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Retrospectives overview

A retro is a live board your team fills in together. Everyone opens the same board, adds cards to its columns, votes on what matters, and talks through the top of the list. When you end it, the board freezes into a summary you can come back to.

What a board is made of

Section titled “What a board is made of”

A board is created from a format — Start / Stop / Continue, Sailboat, Mad / Sad / Glad, and so on. The format decides the board’s columns: their titles, their colours, and the prompt line under each header. See Retro formats for the full catalogue.

Into those columns go cards. Cards carry dot votes and comments, and — on a paid plan — an AI-assigned theme chip. That’s the whole vocabulary. See Cards, columns, votes, and comments.

Two ways to run it

Section titled “Two ways to run it”

Every board is either Guided or Live, and the facilitator can switch between them mid-session from the dock’s Settings.

Guided is the default. The room moves through three phases together, in order:

Feedback → Vote → Review

Each phase gates what people can do. New cards are written during Feedback; dot votes are cast during Vote; Review puts one card at a time on a shared spotlight, sorted by votes. Vote totals stay hidden during Feedback so early cards can’t anchor the vote.

Live removes the phases. It’s an open whiteboard — add cards and vote whenever, no stepper, no spotlight. Useful for a continuous board people top up during the sprint, or for a room that doesn’t need shepherding.

Who’s in the room

Section titled “Who’s in the room”

The person who creates the board is its facilitator. They get a floating dock at the bottom of the board with the controls nobody else sees: the phase advance, the timer, board settings, share and access, Reveal, and End retro.

Everyone else is a participant. Participants add, edit, and drag their own cards, vote, and comment — they just don’t steer the room.

Participants don’t need a workspace seat. A board can be opened to guests with a join link, either with a one-time email check or fully anonymously. See Inviting participants and guest links.

Privacy is decided per board

Section titled “Privacy is decided per board”

Two settings, independent of each other:

  • Private until reveal — during Feedback everyone sees only their own cards; other people’s arrive as locked placeholders with no text and no author. The facilitator’s Reveal opens them all at once. This is on by default on new boards.
  • Anonymous — author names never appear on cards, comments, or votes.

Both are covered in Private feedback and anonymity.

What the AI adds

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Retro boards themselves run free on every plan. The agent that reads them is a paid capability: theme clustering during the session, trends across retros and probe suggestions on the summary. See AI theme clustering and Plans and tiers.

Ending it

Section titled “Ending it”

End retro freezes the board. Cards, votes, and comments become read-only for everyone, and the retro’s default destination becomes its Summary — top-voted cards, per-column energy bars, team temperature, and a CSV export. Only workspace admins can reopen a closed retro. See Closing a retro.

Where to go next

Section titled “Where to go next”