Retro board

The board opens in the writing phase. Everyone types cards into the three columns at the same time, and while that lasts you can only see your own text. Other people show up as a face-down count, so nobody reads the first card posted and quietly writes a version of it. That is the part most retro tools get wrong: if the board is visible while people write, the first few cards set the agenda and the quieter half of the team ends up agreeing instead of contributing.

When the writing slows down, anyone can move the board to voting. The server reveals every card and shuffles the order inside each column, so position gives no hint about who wrote what. Each person gets five dots and can stack more than one on a card they feel strongly about. Totals update live, which is fine: what stays hidden is who voted, not how many votes a card has.

The discussion phase sorts each column by votes and highlights the top card. Work down from there and stop when the time is up rather than forcing every card. Cards in the action column get a checkbox so you can mark the ones the team actually committed to, then copy the whole board as markdown into your notes or ticket tracker.

For a team of six, seven minutes of writing is usually enough, and it should end while people are still typing rather than when the last person runs dry. Five minutes of voting is generous. That leaves most of the hour for the part the board exists to feed, and it is worth saying the split out loud at the start so nobody treats the writing phase as the meeting.

A worked example: twenty two cards go up, and after voting the top of the improve column reads seven dots for the release that slipped twice, four for the review queue, then a long tail of ones and zeros. Seven dots from a team of six means somebody spent two of their five on that single card, which is a stronger signal than seven separate people each nodding once.

Work down from the top and watch the clock rather than the card count. Three cards discussed properly and two actions the team means to keep beats twenty two cards read aloud. When the hour is nearly up, stop discussing and spend the last five minutes on the actions column, because an action written in a hurry at the end is the one that will not survive contact with next week.

A card holds up to three hundred characters and a board holds up to two hundred cards, so the limit you will actually meet is attention rather than storage. One observation per card is the habit worth having: a card carrying three complaints cannot be voted on separately, and the dots it collects tell you nothing about which of the three the team cared about.

The action column is not a wish list. The board gives each action a checkbox in the discussion phase so the room can mark what it has genuinely agreed to, but it stores no owner and no date. Put both in the text of the card. "Ana to split the release checklist before Friday" survives the export; "improve the release process" does not survive the walk back to your desk.

Copy the board as markdown before anyone closes a tab. The export carries all three columns with their vote counts, and the actions come out as checkbox list items that paste into most trackers with their state intact, which is the only record of the session that outlives the room.