Agile Retrospectives Blog

29 Scrum Retrospective Tools for Distributed Agile Retrospectives

Written by Luis Gonçalves | Apr 12, 2023 6:45:11 AM

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="17343" name="Neatro" role="Agile Retrospectives" title="Description" description="Neatro helps your team grow with a selection of effective and industry-proven retrospectives. Whether you're leading a remote or in-person retrospective, pick the activity that matches your team's context. Create action items and assign owners in realtime." link_to="https://www.neatro.io/"/]

28 MANDATORY SCRUM RETROSPECTIVE TOOLS FOR DISTRIBUTED AGILE RETROSPECTIVES

Hi guys, this week I am writing a blog post for all of you that perform distributed Agile Retrospectives. This post will bring several scrum retrospective tools you can use when you run Agile Distributed Retrospectives.

[shortcake_call2action title="AGILE RETROSPECTIVE ONLINE COURSE" description="We have developed an online Agile Retrospectives Certification to help you to take your Agile Retrospectives to the next level." button_text="TAKE THE COURSE" button_link="https://www.scrummastergrowth.com/agile-retrospectives-certification-program-closed"/]

The original work was done by Mark Kilby on his wiki; I just included some comments from the tool providers (most of the text is taken from their website), so that you can understand what the tool is about.

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="17343" name="Neatro" role="Agile Retrospectives" title="Description" description="Neatro helps your team grow with a selection of effective and industry-proven retrospectives. Whether you're leading a remote or in-person retrospective, pick the activity that matches your team's context. Create action items and assign owners in realtime."/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="13373" name="RetroTime" role="Agile Retrospectives" title="Description" description="RetroTime is designed for agile retrospectives and creates a simple way for teams to collaborate and determine the actions items you should take after your retrospective meeting. You can get a 90-day free trial exclusively for reading this blog. Click the link above to start your 90 day trial." link_to="https://retroti.me/?trial=90d&utm_source=goncalves&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=trial" /]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="13516" name="Instant Agenda" role="Agile Retrospectives" title="Description" description="Instant Agenda is a retrospective tool that combines powerful facilitation guidance with unparalleled flexibility, so you can go from ideation to insight to action faster than ever before. It has over 12 built-in templates, lets you measure and track team mood, action items and decisions, and send a meeting summary in seconds. It’s priced per moderator (or Scrum Master) vs. per team and you can also host other meetings like distributed Lean Coffee, 1-on-1s, etc. all included in the low monthly price. Try it free for 42 days. Click on the link above." link_to="https://instantagenda.com/agile-retrospectives/?utm_source=partner&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=IO&utm_content=goncalves" /]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="13806" name="Parabol" role="Agile Retrospectives" title="Description" description="Parabol is online retrospective software with unique features: multiuser grouping, customizable retro templates, rich formatting and emojis, slack integration, and beautiful meeting summaries. Parabol is free to use and open-source." link_to="https://www.parabol.co/" /]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="15292" name="Sprintlio" role="Agile Retrospectives" title="Description" description="Sprintlio is a powerful retrospectives tool built specifically to give PMs and engineering teams a platform to drive participation, maximize accountability, and gain insight into their agile team's health. Colocated or remote -- this is the tool for you." link_to="https://sprintlio.com/" /]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="3666" name="Retrium" role="Agile Retrospectives" title="Description" description="Retrium is one of the only tools designed specifically for retrospectives and it’s my personal favorite!In a single click, Retrium lets you run powerful retrospective techniques, like Mad Sad Glad and Start Stop Continue.Each technique includes private brainstorming, dot voting, prioritized discussion, and more. On top of that, Retrium allows you to create action plans to track your progress. " link_to="http://www.retrium.com/welcome/luis-goncalves"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="11065" name="Go Reflect" role="Agile Retrospectives" title="Description" description="GoReflect is a free tool designed specifically for retrospectives. It supports Start Continue Stop, Mad Sad Glad, What Worked and What Didn’t, and a custom board that allows you to define your own columns. Unlike a typical retrospective, goReflect encourages the idea of a continuous retrospective to drive continuous improvement. Each retrospective board is always available for the team to share their thoughts by adding cards anytime from anywhere. goReflect also provides a dashboard that presents interesting analytics to the team that can promote retrospective engagement." link_to="https://goreflect.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="11583" name="ScatterSpoke" role="Agile Retrospectives" title="Description" description="ScatterSpoke is an agile retrospective tool where anyone on your team can quickly launch and share a retro with team members. Everyone can post cards in real-time, vote on issues, create groups, or pin items for follow up. Create cards when they happen. Have a retro without trying to remember. Gather metrics on common patterns. Have a smarter retrospective. It’s time to ditch the stickies." link_to="http://www.scatterspoke.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="3673" name="MercuryApp" role="Track Your Data" title="Description" description="On this website you can find a fantastic tool to track almost anything. The idea is to track data over time to gain insight of what´s going on. This fantastic tool can be easily used to create a different form of the Happiness Index that can be found here.This tool allows you to set up your own tracking. You can choose different scales and then receive all the information via email with detailed statistics to help you identify patterns.For more information about MercuryApp visit their website." link_to="https://www.mercuryapp.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9420" name="Niko Niko" role="Track Mood Data" title="Description" description="The founders of Niko Niko built Niko Niko as a platform to measure and track mood data. It can be used individually or as a group. They believe that emotional signals like mood and reaction are highly valuable, yet there exists the methodology or tools to track it in a meaningful way. Any type of group can be a “team” and Niko Niko is a powerful platform for dozens of different teams." link_to="http://www.nikoniko.co/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9422" name="RealTime Board" role="White Board" title="Description" description="RealtimeBoard is your regular whiteboard, re-thought for the best online experience. This application allows people to store all their ideas on an endless online board and share them with the entire team! Manage projects, brainstorm and discuss ideas together with the colleagues anytime, anywhere. Or use it in education and let students both in class and at home take part in the discussion.You can add pictures, Vimeo and YouTube videos, PDFs and documents from Google Drive." link_to="https://realtimeboard.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9425" name="WhiteBoard" role="Virtual WhiteBoard" title="Description" description="White Board is a super simple version of a virtual White Board. You can share a simple URL to your team, which can then immediately access a common whiteboard on which they can draw and stick post-its." link_to="https://www.webwhiteboard.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9427" name="Group Board" role="WhiteBoard with Chat" title="Description" description="Group board is a free online whiteboard and chat app that can be easily embedded into your website. It works on any web browser including iPhone, iPad and Android with no downloads or plugins required (we also have iPhone/iPad and Android native apps available).Group Board has been used by universities, online tutors, architects, designers and artists since 1998 for distance learning, online tutoring, collaborative design and online doodling!" link_to="http://www.groupboard.com/products/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9428" name="Lino" role="Virtual Cork Board" title="Description" description="Organize your stickies visually, you can move the stickies around and change their colors whenever and however you like. Organize your stickies visually with free layout of your pictures and movies.Create an Email message containing your note and send it to lino – It will be posted as a sticky. Use stickies to share files among friends and colleagues. Attach your files to stickies, and share them with your friends and colleagues at home and office." link_to="http://en.linoit.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9431" name="Storm Board" role="Virtual Board" title="Description" description="With this app you can Generate and capture ideas. You can quickly add sticky notes, photos and videos to a shared wall. Generate more high quality ideas as everyone can contribute with their own authentic voice on their own device.You can prioritise your ideas; users get ‘dots’ to vote on their favourite ideas. They can add all their votes to one idea or spread them around. With one click, instantly see what ideas your team likes and dive deeper on the best ideas." link_to="https://stormboard.com"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9433" name="MindMeister " role="Mind Mapping" title="Description" description="MindMeister is considered the best online mind-mapping app currently on the market. With its award-winning online version and its free mobile apps for iPhone, iPad and Android, users are able to mind map at school, at home, at the office and even on the go.MindMeister offers a number of powerful features that let users collaborate and brainstorm online, plan projects, develop business strategies, create great presentations and utilize the enormous power of mind maps for their education." link_to="https://www.mindmeister.com"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9434" name="Group Map" role="Several Activities" title="Description" description="This tool shows you over “40 industry best practice templates to plan, brainstorm, develop strategy and educate.” You can create lists, charts and mind-maps. Users can customise headings and add instructions to focus thinking.It is possible to choose the level of anonymity, allowing people to reply honestly without being afraid of discrimination. Tools like simple idea sorting, agree or disagree with suggested ideas, like and/or dislike ideas, dot voting and many other tools are present in Group Map. You can summarise the entire activities into web reports or excel." link_to="https://www.groupmap.com/tour/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9436" name="Cacoo" role="Online Drawing Tool" title="Description" description="Cacoo is a user friendly online drawing tool that allows you to create a variety of diagrams such as site map, flowchart, mind map, wire frame, UML diagram and network diagram. Cacoo can be used free of charge." link_to="https://cacoo.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9437" name="IdeaBoardz" role="Team Collaboration Tool" title="Description" description="IdeaBoardz is a team collaboration tool. It allows teams to collectively brainstorm, gather inputs, reflect and retrospect. It is especially useful for teams that are distributed geographically. It is also handy for teams to collect inputs over some days and then meet to discuss them." link_to="http://www.ideaboardz.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9439" name="GroupZap" role="Brainstorm Tool" title="Description" description="The easiest way to brainstorm and document your thoughts and strategies. The power of many: use GroupZap to create breakthrough brainstorming sessions with your team.Use it to develop your corporate strategy, name a product or identify the solutions to issues in your organisation. No need to register: just invite people via email or IM." link_to="http://groupzap.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9440" name="Padlet" role="Collaboration Tool" title="Description" description="This is a tool that can serve several purposes like the ones listed below:Personal note takingTo-do listsParty InvitationsFeedbackCollectionWishing people on occasions, like birthdays, anniversariesAnything that might need input from a lot of people" link_to="http://padlet.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9442" name="EtherPad" role="Online Editor" title="Description" description="Etherpad is a highly customizable Open Source online editor providing collaborative editing in really real-time." link_to="http://etherpad.org/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9443" name="Pointing Poker" role="Distributed Agile Retrospectives" title="Description" description="PoitingPoker is a tool which has functionality for both Pointing Poker and Retrospectives for distributed teams" link_to="https://www.pointingpoker.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9444" name="Symphonical" role="Follow Up Information Tool" title="Description" description="Symphonical is super simple and free. Be creative, develop, share, organize and follow up on information. Everyone sees what everyone else is doing – simultaneously. Screen sharing is all of a sudden, old-fashioned. Closest thing to ‘being there’ in an actual meeting." link_to="https://www.upwave.io/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9445" name="Sensei" role="Distributed Agile Retrospectives" title="Description" description="Fun, effective retrospectives for distributed agile teams. Engage your whole team in the continuous improvement process with simple activities that make it easy to gather insights, suggest actions and follow up on commitments." link_to="https://www.senseitool.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9446" name="Agile Cockpit" role="Agile Tool" title="Description" description="There is an Agile tooling app which is specifically made for Distributed Team Retrospectives called – Agile Cockpit. It has an app which is called Retrospective app and is real time and teams across locations can real time capture their retrospectives" link_to="https://www.agilecockpit.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9447" name="Stormz Hangout" role="Distributed Agile Retrospectives" title="Description" description="Conduct a retrospective with a remote team using Google Hangout." link_to="http://stormzhangout.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9448" name="CoSketch" role="White Board" title="Description" description="CoSketch is a multi-user online whiteboard designed to give you the ability to quickly visualize and share your ideas as images.Anything you paint will show up for all other users in the room in real time. One click to save a sketch as an image for embedding on forums, blogs, etc. Runs in all common browsers without plugins or installation. Free and without registration." link_to="http://cosketch.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="9449" name="Twiddla" role="Virtual Collaboration" title="Description" description="Mark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Browse the web with your friends or make that conference call more productive than ever.No plug-ins, downloads, or firewall voodoo – it’s all here, ready to go when you are. Browser-agnostic, user-friendly." link_to="http://www.twiddla.com/"/]

[shortcake_featured_content attachment="12745" name="Sprint Boards" role="Sprint Boards for Agile Developers" title="Description" description="Built on Laravel and Vue, this free retrospective tool pays attention to the details you care about: with keyboard shortcuts for adding and saving cards; and support for merging duplicates, it makes retrospectives simple and easy. Create as many boards as you need and lock them when you’re done to prevent further changes. Great for scrum masters that need to review past retros." link_to="https://sprintboards.io/" /]

[shortcake_call2action title="AGILE RETROSPECTIVE ONLINE COURSE" description="We have developed an online Agile Retrospectives Certification to help you to take your Agile Retrospectives to the next level." button_text="TAKE THE COURSE" button_link="https://www.scrummastergrowth.com/agile-retrospectives-certification-program-closed"/]