Retrospectives

Create and configure a retrospective board: templates, columns, the action column, vote budgets, the voting phase, emoji reactions and anonymous mode

Updated

Retrospectives live on the Retrospectives tab of the Agile Toolbox project page. Every board keeps its own list of retrospectives, active and archived.

The Retrospectives list with search, sorting and one row per retrospective

The list

Each row shows the retrospective’s name, its owner, the creation date, the Jira issues created or linked from it, the template it was built from and whether it is Active or Archived. From here you can:

  • Search by name and sort by newest, oldest or name.
  • Open a retrospective to join it.
  • Use the … menu for Settings, Archive and Delete. Archiving makes the board read-only and moves it to the archived list; it cannot be undone. Deleting removes it permanently. Both are limited to the owner unless the board allows anyone to edit.
  • Switch to View archived to browse past retrospectives, and back with View active.

Creating a retrospective

Press New retrospective. The configuration page has four parts.

The retrospective configuration page with settings, the template picker and three columns

Basic information

A name is required.

Settings

  • Anyone can edit and reveal the cards. When off, only the creator can change settings, hide and reveal cards, open and close voting, reset votes and archive. When on, every participant can.
  • Anonymous retrospective. Hides who wrote each card, who voted and who reacted; only the counts remain. Once saved, this cannot be switched off again.
  • Votes per participant. The vote budget for each person, from 1 to 99. Enter 0 for unlimited votes. The budget can be changed at any time; if you lower it, votes already cast are kept.
  • Allow more than one vote on the same card. When off, each person can vote once per card.
  • Votes can only be cast during a voting phase. When on, nobody can vote until someone presses Start voting on the board, and voting closes again with Stop voting. Leave it off to keep voting open all the time.
  • Allow emoji reactions on cards. Switch reactions off for a board that should stay strictly about votes.

Quick setup

Pick a template to fill the columns in one go:

Template Columns
Went well What went well, To improve, Action items
Start Stop Continue Start, Stop, Continue
4L Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for
Sail trip Wind, Anchor, Rocks, Island
Mad Sad Glad Mad, Sad, Glad
Thumbs Thumbs up, Thumbs down
What went… What went well, What went wrong
Starfish Keep, More of, Less of, Start, Stop
KALM Keep, Add, Less, More

Columns

Add, rename (up to 50 characters), delete and drag columns into the order you want. Mark one column as the action column: the board then offers Create issues for every card in it. Unmark the column, or delete it, to take the button away.

Press Save. The retrospective appears at the top of the list, and Running a retrospective takes it from there.

Changing settings later

Open Settings from the list or the board. Everything can be changed while the retrospective is active, except anonymity, which is permanent once saved.