Running a Retro

Running a Retrospective well requires a balance of structure and flexibility. This guide covers the key phases of a retro session and how to facilitate an effective discussion.

Top-Level Status vs Sub-Status

Each Retrospective sits in one of three top-level statuses: Build, In Progress, and Completed. The manage page only shows these three tabs. While the retro is In Progress, participants see three sub-statuses on the public retro page - Draft, Vote, and Discuss - which the facilitator advances using the pills in the header. Only top-level changes are recorded on the timeline; flipping between Draft, Vote, and Discuss is silent.

Live Collaboration

Manager Toolkit Retrospectives are fully live. When participants open the retro link, they see the board in real time. Notes, votes, comments, and reactions added by one person appear for everyone else within a second.

Adding Notes

During the Draft sub-status, participants add notes to columns. Each note is a short thought, observation, or suggestion. Encourage your team to:

• Write one idea per note rather than combining multiple thoughts
• Be specific rather than vague ("The deployment process took three hours" rather than "Deployments are slow")
• Focus on behaviours and processes rather than blaming individuals

The Show authors option is on by default, so participant display names appear on the notes they create. Switch it off in the retro settings before the session if you want a more anonymous feel.

Editing and Merging Notes

Authors can edit or delete their own notes during Draft and Vote. The facilitator can edit or delete any note at any time for moderation.

If two notes are saying the same thing, the facilitator can merge them into a single note from the Completed tab. Pro users get an AI-assisted preview that suggests the merged wording. The source notes stay on the board flagged as merged so the history is not lost. See Note Merging.

AI Theme Tags

When a participant adds a note, a small AI job runs in the background and assigns a one-to-three-word Title Case theme tag (for example, "Code Reviews" or "On-Call Load"). Tags appear on the note shortly after it is added and are reused across notes in the same retro that share a theme. Theme tags are a Pro feature and auto-link to Key Themes when the retro completes. See Theme Tags.

Comments on Notes

When Allow comments on notes is on (the default), any participant can leave a comment under a note during Draft, Vote, or Discuss. Authors can edit and delete their own comments; the facilitator can edit or delete any comment for moderation. See Note Comments.

Emoji Reactions on Notes

If you enable Allow reactions on notes, participants can leave emoji reactions: thumbs-up, plus, laugh, cry, and agree. Reaction counts appear next to each note. See Note Reactions.

Voting

Once notes are in place, the facilitator advances the retro to the Vote sub-status. Each participant gets a set number of votes (default 3) and can spend them across the notes that matter most. By default each note can only receive one vote per participant; the Allow multiple votes per note option lifts that restriction.

Voting helps prioritise the discussion. See Retro Voting and Prioritisation for the full mechanics.

Discussion

In the Discuss sub-status, the facilitator picks the next note to talk about. That note slides to the centre of the screen and comments, emoji reactions, and per-note actions appear underneath. Participants can:

• Suggest actions that should come out of the discussion
• React with agree or disagree on each proposed action
• Add comments to capture nuance
• Click Done when they have nothing more to say on the current note

When every participant has clicked Done, the participants button pulses for the facilitator so they know it is time to move on. See Viewer Presence and Done Signals.

AI Action Suggestions

While discussing a note, the facilitator can ask AI to suggest an action that addresses it. The participant decides whether to Keep the suggestion (which adds it to the retro actions) or Discard it. AI action suggestions are a Pro feature. See AI Action Suggestions.

Facilitating the Discussion

As the facilitator, your role is to:

A good facilitator creates a safe space where people feel comfortable sharing honest feedback without fear of judgement.

Wrapping Up

When the discussion is done, switch the retro to Completed. Any retro actions created during Discuss are saved against the retro and tracked in your normal actions list. See Retro Actions for the full action lifecycle.