21 Mandatory Tools for Distributed Agile Retrospectives

Distributed Agile Retrospectives

Hi guys, this week I am writing a blog post for all of you that perform distributed Agile Retrospectives. This post will bring several tools you can use when you run Agile Retrospectives in a distributed environment. The original work was done by Mark Kilby on his wiki; I just included some comments from the tool providers (most of the text is taken from their website), so that you can understand what the tool is about.

Retrium

Retrium is one of the only tools designed specifically for retrospectives and it’s my personal favorite! In a single click, Retriumlets you run powerful retrospective techniques, like Mad Sad Glad and Start Stop Continue. Each technique includes private brainstorming, dot voting, prioritized discussion, and more. On top of that, Retrium allows you to create action plans to track your progress. For more information about Retrium visit their website.

MercuryApp

On this website you can find a fantastic tool to track almost anything. The idea is to track data over time to gain insight of what´s going on. This fantastic tool can be easily used to create a different form of the Happiness Index that can be found here.

This tool allows you to set up your own tracking. You can choose different scales and then receive all the information via email with detailed statistics to help you identify patterns.

For more information about MercuryApp visit their website.

Niko Niko

The founders of Niko Niko built Niko Niko as a platform to measure and track mood data. It can be used individually or as a group. They believe that emotional signals like mood and reaction are highly valuable, yet there exists the methodology or tools to track it in a meaningful way. Any type of group can be a “team” and Niko Niko is a powerful platform for dozens of different teams.

For more information about Niko Niko visit their website.

RealTime Board

RealtimeBoard is your regular whiteboard, re-thought for the best online experience. This application allows people to store all their ideas on an endless online board and share them with the entire team! Manage projects, brainstorm and discuss ideas together with the colleagues anytime, anywhere. Or use it in education and let students both in class and at home take part in the discussion.

You can add pictures, Vimeo and YouTube videos, PDFs and documents from Google Drive. You can collaborate with your remote teams without any problems. You can share concepts and ideas, prototype, leave comments and gather feedback from colleagues.

The work can be exported as PDFs and images, embed them to your website, blog or even post them to your Facebook timeline just like a YouTube video!

For more information about RealTime Board visit their website.

White Board

White Board is a super simple version of a virtual White Board. You can share a simple URL to your team, which can then immediately access a common whiteboard on which they can draw and stick post-its.

For more information about White Board visit their website.

Group Board

Group board is a free online whiteboard and chat app that can be easily embedded into your website. It works on any web browser including iPhone, iPad and Android with no downloads or plugins required (we also have iPhone/iPad and Android native apps available).

Group Board has been used by universities, online tutors, architects, designers and artists since 1998 for distance learning, online tutoring, collaborative design and online doodling!

For more information about Group Board visit their website.

Lino

Organize your stickies visually, you can move the stickies around and change their colors whenever and however you like. Organize your stickies visually with free layout of your pictures and movies.

Create an Email message containing your note and send it to lino – It will be posted as a sticky. Use stickies to share files among friends and colleagues. Attach your files to stickies, and share them with your friends and colleagues at home and office.

Create a group with your friends and colleagues to share a canvas and stickies with them. Lino is an ideal tool to share your ideas and to have a discussion with your friends and colleagues. Share your ideas with texts and pictures.

For more information about Lino visit their website.

StormBoard

With this app you can Generate and capture ideas. You can quickly add sticky notes, photos and videos to a shared wall. Generate more high quality ideas as everyone can contribute with their own authentic voice on their own device.

You can comment on ideas, all ideas have a comment thread allowing your team to clarify, debate and refine ideas. This gives you both better ideas and captures the discussion for future reference or debate.

You can prioritise your ideas; users get ‘dots’ to vote on their favourite ideas. They can add all their votes to one idea or spread them around. With one click, instantly see what ideas your team likes and dive deeper on the best ideas.

You can collaborate in real time or on your own time (synchronously or asynchronously). Invite everyone into a single storm and everyone gets to actively participate rather than watching someone broadcast their screen.

For more information about StormBoard visit their website.

Cacoo

Cacoo is a user friendly online drawing tool that allows you to create a variety of diagrams such as site map, flowchart, mind map, wire frame, UML diagram and network diagram. Cacoo can be used free of charge.

For more information about Cacoo visit their website.

MindMeister

MindMeister is considered the best online mind-mapping app currently on the market. With its award-winning online version and its free mobile apps for iPhone, iPad and Android, users are able to mind map at school, at home, at the office and even on the go.

Mind mapping with MindMeister is so simple and intuitive that anyone from first grader to CEO can use it to improve their productivity and turn their creative ideas into action. MindMeister offers a number of powerful features that let users collaborate and brainstorm online, plan projects, develop business strategies, create great presentations and utilize the enormous power of mind maps for their education.

Share your mind maps and brainstorm with others in real-timeMulti-media: Add images, links, notes, files or videos to your mind map. Make your mind maps public and embed them in a website or blog. Turn mind maps into stunning presentations. Assign tasks to your collaborators and follow their progress in your activity stream. Turn your mind maps into Word documents, PNGs, PDFs or convert them into other mind map formats.

For more information about MindMeister visit their website.

IdeaBoardz

IdeaBoardz is a team collaboration tool. It allows teams to collectively brainstorm, gather inputs, reflect and retrospect. It is especially useful for teams that are distributed geographically. It is also handy for teams to collect inputs over some days and then meet to discuss them.

For more information about IdeaBoardz visit their website.

GroupZap

The easiest way to brainstorm and document your thoughts and strategies. The power of many: use GroupZap to create breakthrough brainstorming sessions with your team.

Use it to develop your corporate strategy, name a product or identify the solutions to issues in your organisation. No need to register: just invite people via email or IM.

For more information about GroupZap visit their website.

Group Map

This tool shows you over “40 industry best practice templates to plan, brainstorm, develop strategy and educate.” You can create lists, charts and mind-maps. Users can customise headings and add instructions to focus thinking.

It is possible to choose the level of anonymity, allowing people to reply honestly without being afraid of discrimination. Tools like simple idea sorting, agree or disagree with suggested ideas, like and/or dislike ideas, dot voting and many other tools are present in Group Map. You can summarise the entire activities into web reports or excel.

For more information about Group Map visit their website.

Padlet

This is a tool that can serve several purposes like the ones listed below:

• Personal note taking
• To-do lists
• Party Invitations
• Feedback
• Collection
• Wishing people on occasions, like birthdays, anniversaries
• Anything that might need input from a lot of people,

For more information about Padlet visit their website.

Etherpad

Etherpad is a highly customizable Open Source online editor providing collaborative editing in really real-time.

For more information about Etherpad visit their website.

PoitingPoker

PoitingPoker is a tool which has functionality for both Pointing Poker and Retrospectives for distributed teams

For more information about PoitingPoker visit their website.

Symphonical

Symphonical is super simple and free. Be creative, develop, share, organize and follow up on information. Everyone sees what everyone else is doing - simultaneously. Screen sharing is all of a sudden, old-fashioned. Closest thing to ‘being there’ in an actual meeting.

For more information about Symphonical visit their website.

Sensei

Fun, effective retrospectives for distributed agile teams. Engage your whole team in the continuous improvement process with simple activities that make it easy to gather insights, suggest actions and follow up on commitments.

For more information about Sensei visit their website.

Agile Cockpit

There is an Agile tooling app which is specifically made for Distributed Team Retrospectives called – Agile Cockpit. It has an app which is called Retrospective app and is real time and teams across locations can real time capture their retrospectives

For more information about Agile Cockpit visit their website.

Stormz Hangout

Conduct a retrospective with a remote team using Google Hangout.

For more information about Stormz Hangout visit their website.

CoSketch

CoSketch is a multi-user online whiteboard designed to give you the ability to quickly visualize and share your ideas as images.

Anything you paint will show up for all other users in the room in real time. One click to save a sketch as an image for embedding on forums, blogs, etc. Runs in all common browsers without plugins or installation. Free and without registration.

For more information about CoSketch visit their website.

Twiddla

Mark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Browse the web with your friends or make that conference call more productive than ever.

No plug-ins, downloads, or firewall voodoo - it’s all here, ready to go when you are. Browser-agnostic, user-friendly.

For more information about Twiddla visit their website.

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