This walkthrough helps a facilitator guide a team from an empty retrospective board to a small set of clear follow-ups. Participants will contribute attributable feedback, refine their own cards, acknowledge useful points, discuss themes, and confirm that the shared record is ready to revisit. For the feature’s broader purpose and boundaries, start with Retrospectives.
Prepare the Session
A useful retrospective begins with a focused question and the right group. Decide what period or event the team is reviewing before anyone starts adding cards, such as the last sprint, a release, an incident response, or a completed workshop.
•Choose the board’s home - Use a space area that every intended participant can enter. Private-area access still applies, so confirm access before sharing the board.
•Confirm who can create it - Creating a retrospective requires Retrospectives app access, currently included with Coordinator. Participants who can enter the board’s area can open it and contribute without becoming its creator. If the board does not exist yet, follow Create and Open a Retrospective. •Write one clear prompt - Name the work and the period under review. A prompt such as What helped or slowed the July release, and what should we change next? gives participants a common frame without prescribing their answers.
•Set the expected result - Tell the group that the session should end with a few concrete cards in Action Items, not only a collection of observations.
•Choose the starting context - Open the board from Retros or Documents. As an optional alternative, an activity meeting can open the same workspace as a live app; Collaborate with Live Apps in a Meeting covers that meeting flow. If the prompt needs background, examples, or an agenda, keep that longer context in the board’s linked Article. The facilitator can point participants there before reflection begins without crowding the feedback cards.
Open the Board and Orient the Team
When the board loads, make sure everyone recognizes the same three fixed areas:
•Use Went Well for strengths - Capture outcomes, practices, and moments that the team wants to repeat.
•Use To Improve for friction - Record delays, confusion, gaps, and other problems worth changing.
•Use Action Items for follow-through - Turn the discussion into specific next moves rather than restating the original problem.
Each column shows its current card count and an Add Card action. The participant header shows people who have joined the board, but it is saved participant context rather than a precise online-status list. Use the meeting or your usual communication channel when you need to check who is present right now.
Gather Observations
Give participants a short quiet reflection period before discussion. Starting individually helps the board collect different perspectives instead of allowing the first speaker to define every theme.
•Add a positive observation - Select Add Card under Went Well, then describe one useful result or behavior. Prefer specific text such as Pairing unblocked two difficult reviews over a general note such as Teamwork was good.
•Name one point to improve - Add a card under To Improve that describes the friction and its effect. Keep separate problems on separate cards so the team can discuss them clearly.
•Add an early action when it is already obvious - Use Action Items for a concrete next move that does not need more diagnosis. The team can add further actions after discussing the observation columns.
•Watch the counts - Check that each new card increases the count in its intended column. The counts help the facilitator see whether one part of the conversation needs more attention; they do not measure importance.
•Make room for every participant - Use the participant context as a reminder to invite quieter contributors, while remembering that it does not prove who is currently watching the board.
Cards remain attached to the people who created them. This makes it easier to ask for clarification during the discussion and preserves the source of each observation when the board is reopened.
Commit and Refine Card Text
Typing stays local while a participant is actively editing a card. The change is shared after the edit is committed, so finish the thought and then leave the field or complete editing before asking others to review it.
•Commit the first version - Click or tap away from the card after entering the feedback. Wait for the saved wording to remain visible before moving to the next point.
•Refine your own card - Return to a card you created, make the wording more precise, and leave the field again to commit the revision. For example, change Handoffs were late to Build handoffs arrived one day too late for review.
•Preserve authorship - Ask the card’s author to make later text changes. Participants do not collaboratively overwrite one another’s cards; when a different perspective deserves its own wording, add another card.
•Recover from a save problem - If Visual Space reports that a card could not be saved, keep the current wording available, check access or connectivity, and commit it again. Do not treat an unsaved local edit as a shared update.
For more detail about card ownership, committed updates, and participant tracking, see Cards and Participation.
Acknowledge Without Turning Reactions into Votes
Use a reaction when a card resonates, needs a quick acknowledgment, or represents a shared experience. Open the card’s options, choose Add Reaction, and select an emoji. The card shows the resulting reaction, and participants with the relevant access can open Reactions to inspect who reacted.
Reactions are acknowledgment, not a voting phase. A heavily reacted card may be worth discussing, but its reaction count does not automatically rank the board or decide what becomes an action item. The facilitator should still ask what the reaction means and make the team’s choices explicit in the conversation.
Discuss Themes and Create Follow-Ups
Read across Went Well and To Improve before deciding what to carry forward. Look for repeated causes, connected observations, and tensions between a successful practice and a recurring problem. Since each card keeps its original column and creation order, name themes aloud or summarize them in the linked context instead of depending on a hidden sorting step.
•Clarify the observation - Ask the author what happened, who or what was affected, and whether the wording captures the issue accurately. Let the author refine the card if the conversation reveals a clearer statement.
•Protect successful practices - For an important Went Well card, ask what made the result possible and what the team should deliberately repeat.
•Choose a useful change - For a To Improve theme, agree on the smallest follow-up that could improve the next cycle. Avoid copying the problem into Action Items without saying what will change.
•Write the action in observable terms - Add a new Action Items card with a concrete behavior and checkpoint, such as Mira — test the handoff checklist before Friday’s review. Names and dates here are ordinary card text, so the team should carry the commitment into its normal planning workflow when ongoing tracking is needed.
•Confirm shared understanding - Ask the responsible teammate to restate the intended result and check that the action card reflects it. Add a separate action card when a theme needs more than one independent follow-up.
Retrospectives does not create another work item automatically. The board records the team’s decision; the team remains responsible for transferring any ongoing commitment to the place where it normally plans and tracks work.
Use Article and Comments for Deeper Context
Keep cards concise enough to scan during the session. When a topic needs evidence, an agenda, a long explanation, or a narrative summary, open Article from the retrospective tools and place that context in the board’s linked document. The Article begins as a draft, and using the board does not publish it or create a post.
Open Comments when the team needs a connected discussion beside the board, especially for questions that should remain available after the live conversation. Article and Comments use the same retrospective context and can be opened and closed without abandoning the three columns. Linked Context and Meetings explains these supporting surfaces in more depth.
Verify the Shared Result
Before leaving, use a short cross-check with at least one other participant. This catches an uncommitted edit while the conversation is still fresh.
•Confirm a committed update - Have one participant create or refine a card and leave its text field. Another viewer should see the saved wording without reopening the whole board.
•Check column placement and counts - Make sure every observation and follow-up appears in the intended column and that each column count matches the visible cards.
•Review authors and reactions - Confirm that cards show their contributors and that acknowledgments remain on the cards where they were added.
•Review the participant context - Check that people who joined are represented in the header, without using that saved list as proof of current attendance.
•Read the action items aloud - Verify that every selected follow-up describes a next move, a responsible person in the wording when useful, and a checkpoint the team can recognize.
The session is ready to finish when the team understands the main themes and knows what happens next. There is no separate completion ceremony required inside the board.
Leave and Reopen the Same Board
•Leave a standalone board - If the board carries activity context, use its exit action to return to that activity. Otherwise, leave through the surrounding app or space navigation.
•Leave a meeting-hosted board - Use the meeting’s stage or Live Apps controls. The embedded retrospective uses the meeting’s surrounding controls instead of showing the standalone exit action.
•Return through the same area - Open Retros or Documents in the board’s owning space area and select the same retrospective-linked item.
•Verify persistence - Confirm that all three columns load with the saved cards, refined wording, authors, reactions, and participant context. Open Article or Comments if you also need to check the longer record.
Leaving does not finish or lock the retrospective. The same board remains editable, so the team can return after the session to refine an author-owned card, review a follow-up, or continue the connected discussion.
