Retrospective meeting has become popular among Scrum teams and agile project management approaches. A few months ago, I was diving into new tools for agile project management. While I was looking around, I stumbled upon new terms like anonymous retrospective, fun retrospectives and retro boards.
Having a retrospective meeting is very important to have an environment where people can discuss problems and obstacles they have been facing during the project. In this article I will show you some great tools for having an online retrospective.
Reetro
Reetro is by far the most comprehensive free retrospective tool online. You would definitely be wondering how come a tool of this kind is 100% free.
URL to access this tool: https://www.reetro.io/
The home page of Reetro retrospective tool looks as below
Once you sign up, there are lot of options to create retrospective board. Lot of predefined templates are available which you can make use of like shown below
If you observe, there are lot of other options as well while creating a retrospective board like making board public or private, enabling voting option, collecting feedback anonymously and maximum allowed votes per each candidate etc.
All these options will help teams to conduct retrospection events in their own way as per the need.
What makes this the best free retrospective tool online?
#1. Lot of pre-defined retrospective templates,which would enable teams to make use of different formats to engage teams and create interest.
#2. Very easy to collect feedback.
#3. Options to collect feedback anonymously.
#4.Lot of options to conduct voting on feedback points collected or any other general points too.
#5.Options to enter GIFs as feedback too,which would make things funny and convey the information effectively.
#6.Easy to create ,assign and track action items. One of the most important thing required for teams as far as retrospection is concerned for continuous improvement.
#7. There is an option to automatically create retrospective board with what ever parameters team is looking for.
#8. Lot of useful metrics to understand how the feedback is and enables team to understand how things are getting better over a period of time.
#9.Integrations available with JIRA, Azure DevOps , Confluence and Trello.
#10. Supports unlimited teams and boards.So can be used across teams as long as one person acting as an administrator.
Overall a top choice when it comes to free retrospective online tools.
GoRetro.ai
Another (conceptually) very strong alternative is GoRetro.ai. I suspect it’s a fork of Funretro (it’s just all too similar) and completely free. Especially if you’re transitioning from EasyRetro, this should feel like a known territory to you.
What you’ll get for free:
- Unlimited retro boards
- 6 customisable columns per board
- A global action tracker
- Private and public boards
What’s missing:
- No export for action items
- The UI design is questionable. The actual content of a card is getting the least attention and frequent character encoding problems make the tool less fun to use.
- Much like Reetro, it could use some more creative retro format presets
Geekbot
With Geekbot you can send a set of retrospective questions to your team members directly in Slack. After they have answered them, the bot then sends all the responses into a designed Slack channel so that the team could later analyze feedback from everyone and come up with action plans to improve the current state of things.
Pros:
- Full customization: customize retrospective questions to your particular needs: change questions, add icebreakers, configure the time
- NLP-analysis: Geekbot can provide NLP-analysis to team responses if you need additional info on team morale
- Asynchronous, equal feedback: team members share feedback equally and at the most convenient time for them, allowing remote teams to effectively run retrospectives even with employees distributed over different time zones.
Cons:
- Works only with Slack
TeamMood
TeamMood helps you gather daily insights on how your team members are feeling. You can then use your team mood chart and feedback as a basis to open up discussions in your retrospectives.
Pricing
TeamMood starts at €2 per month per user, after a 30-day trial period. An Enterprise pack allows for more customization and integration with businesses’ internal tools.
Killing feature
TeamMood is easy as pie and lets you gather anonymous moods and feedback on a daily basis. Your team members simply click on their mood of the day on the email they receive each day at a specific time, no more than 2mn.
Website: TeamMood
Ideaboardz
Idea boardz is another popular choice when it comes to free online retrospective tools.
It is an online retrospective and collaboration tool which is completely FREE to use and comes with an interesting design.
URL to access this tool: https://ideaboardz.com/
The home page of this free retrospective online tool looks as below
Have already reviewed this tool earlier and here is the how to use guide of Ideaboardz retrospective tool.
Why is this one of the top retrospective tools online?
#1. Retrospective boards can be created directly without even logging in.
#2. Very easy to create retrospective boards.
#3. Maintaining these boards are also easy. The boards can be deleted easily whenever you want.
#4. Some popular retrospective formats available as pre-defined templates.
#5. The retrospective board link can be shared, and team can connect and provide feedback easily.
#6.If team wants to download the retrospective boards, there are options to download to PDF or excel.
#7. There is also an option to search for the content entered in the retrospective board.
#8. Completely FREE with no strings attached.
Overall another great choice and would be the best retrospective tool online if you are looking for 100% free tool to conduct retros for your team in an engaging and effective way.
Teleretro.com
Even though Teleretro.com has fewer free features, it offers some other nifty ones instead: Ice breakers, inspiring backgrounds and a lightweight board design which really spurs engagement.
On top of that, of all the options tested, its action tracker has by far the most export options
What you’ll get for free:
- 3 retro boards (which you can delete or recycle)
- 5 customisable columns per board
- A global action tracker
- Public boards only
- Ice breakers, a really slim and engaging UI, backgrounds
- Export actions into Jira, Slack, Trello, Monday.com, Microsoft Teams and many more
What’s missing:
- Private retros would be nice, but I think you will enjoy enough privacy using public boards.
- The 12 offered retro presets could offer more variety
Whiteboards
Whiteboards are often used in office retrospective sessions, but they require an experienced scrum master or team lead to quickly put feedback from team members on the boards.
Online whiteboards have a critical advantage over office boards: they are more flexible. Once you put ideas on the digital whiteboard you can easily edit and rearrange them during your discussions.
If your team likes to use whiteboards during retrospectives, here are some services you might find useful:
- Limnu: realistic collaborative whiteboard experience
- AWW: rich functionality with ability to embed whiteboards onto webpages
- Stormboard: a combination of a whiteboard and a sticky-note organizer
Pros:
- Whiteboards are great for teams and scrum master who are used to running retrospectives using them
- A wide range of whiteboard services for different teams
Cons:
- Needs smart management to prevent chaos and board cluttering
- Additional effort to export visual ideas and messages into action lists
sive web app, making it possible to assist a retrospective meeting from your smartphone, tablet, or laptop.
Website: Neatro
Conclusion:
A retrospective can be defined as an activity where people look back on the past to interpret, understand, and learn from its events. This activity is carried out in an organized manner with one or more specific objectives in mind. If you are new to the idea of conducting a retrospective for your project team, then the following online tools will help your team members remember what they accomplished during their time on the project.