Retrospective tools are online boards that guide a team through a retro, from gathering input to agreeing one change. They suit scrum teams running a sprint retrospective as well as kanban, operations and project teams that review their way of working on a regular cadence.
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Open-source agile meeting tool
Open-source meeting tool for retrospectives, standups, sprint poker and team health checks, with templates, anonymous input and automatic meeting summaries.
Guided retrospective facilitation
Retrospective platform with structured formats such as Start/Stop/Continue and Lean Coffee, anonymous brainstorming, grouping, voting and action-item history.
Retros, health checks and standups
Workspace for agile teams to run retrospectives, team health checks, standups and planning poker, with integrations to Jira, GitHub and Linear.
The basics
Retrospective tools run a team's regular look back at how work went. They collect input, group and vote on themes, and track the actions that follow.
In lean terms a retrospective is a form of hansei, or reflection, and a small PDCA cycle on the way the team works.
Common formats include start, stop, continue and the 4Ls: liked, learned, lacked and longed for. Changing the format now and then keeps the input fresh.
Sticky notes on a wall work well for a co-located team. The value comes from the conversation and the follow-up.
Tools help remote and hybrid teams take part equally, and they carry actions from one retro to the next so nothing is lost.
The routine it supports
How the listed tools are priced
The Scrum Guide makes the sprint retrospective the last event of each sprint. The team inspects how the sprint went for individuals, interactions, processes, tools and its definition of done, then picks the most helpful changes to make.
A sprint retrospective tool helps by timeboxing each phase and by carrying improvement items into the next sprint. Some can add the agreed action straight to the sprint backlog in your tracker, so it is planned like any other work.
Most retrospective tools ship with templates. Common ones include start, stop, continue; mad, sad, glad; the sailboat, which asks what pushes the team forward and what holds it back; and the starfish, which adds more of and less of to start, stop and continue.
Pick the format for the question in front of the team. After an incident, a timeline followed by five whys often works better than a general template. Whatever the format, end with one action the team can test before the next retro, in the spirit of PDCA.
In a remote retrospective, the tool replaces the wall and the sticky notes. Silent writing time, hidden authors and dot voting let everyone contribute, including people who would not speak first on a call.
Keep cameras and conversation for the discussion of the top theme, where most of the value is. Check that guests can join without creating an account, and that the board can be exported if you need a record.
Buying guide
Who it's for: Agile teams, scrum masters, coaches and any team that meets regularly to improve how it works. It is most useful for remote and hybrid teams.
Formats that fit the moment
A range of templates, plus the option to build your own, so the session matches the team's current question.
Anonymous input
The option to hide authors during brainstorming, which helps quieter or newer team members speak up.
Grouping and voting
Quick ways to cluster similar notes and vote, so the team focuses on the one or two issues that matter most.
Action follow-through
Actions with owners that carry into the next retro, or sync to the team's work tracker. This is what makes retros pay off.
Before you choose
FAQ
Sources
Written by the lean-stack editors following our methodology. Updated October 3, 2026.
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Submit it for review. Every tool is checked against our listing criteria and researched from public sources. Approved tools join their category in the next published batch.
