Retrospectives

Phases overview

The phases a retrospective moves through and who moves it.

A retrospective moves through its phases in a fixed order, and each phase opens some actions and closes others. This page lists the phases, shows how the facilitator moves between them and says what a completed retro no longer allows.

The phases, in order

Phase	What happens
Icebreaker	A short game before the work. Present only when the icebreaker is turned on for the retro.
Writing	Everyone writes cards in the columns. The cards of the others stay hidden.
Grouping	The cards are revealed. Cards that say the same thing are put together and the group is named.
Voting	Everyone spreads their votes over the cards and groups.
Discussing	The team goes through the topics, most voted first, with notes, comments and the first action items.
Actions	The team turns what was said into action items with an owner and a due date.
ROTI	Everyone rates whether the time was well spent.
Completed	The retro is over. It shows its results and can no longer be changed.

The header of the board shows the phases as a row of steps, with the current one named.

The phases in the header of the board: the first one done, Grouping current, four to come, and the arrows of the facilitator

Move to the next phase

Only the facilitator of the retro moves the board. Everyone else follows: their board changes at the same moment.

As the facilitator, do one of these:

select the main button of the bar at the bottom of the board, which is named after the phase it leads to (Grouping, Voting, and so on; Go to the retro from the icebreaker, Next phase from Actions);
select the right arrow beside the steps in the header, or the next step itself;
press Ctrl+→ (⌘+→ on a Mac) while the cursor is not in a text field.

A retro moves one phase at a time: you cannot jump from Writing to Discussing.

Go back

Select the left arrow beside the steps, or the previous step. Going back to Voting starts a new round of “I have finished voting”: nobody is marked as finished any more.

Complete the retro

On the last phase, the main button of the facilitator’s bar becomes End session. It ends the retro at once, without a confirmation. A facilitator can also end a retro that has started from any phase: select the back arrow at the top left of the board, then End the session in the dialog; the remaining phases are skipped. Leave, the session continues in the same dialog leaves the board open for the others.

Once a retro is completed:

cards can no longer be written, edited, grouped, voted on, commented or reacted to;
no action item can be added from the board, except by promoting a suggested action, see Summary and sharing;
the ROTI vote, the surveys and the health check of the retro are closed;
the timer is stopped, and the lock, the vote settings, the icebreaker, the reactions, the cursors and the presentation mode can no longer be changed.

The facilitator can still select Reopen in the header. The retro goes back to its last phase, ROTI.