Remote retrospectives: 9 tips for hybrid teams

Remotely, a retrospective loses what held it together in a room: eye contact, the sticky notes you watch filling up, the silence you notice. What is left is a video call where the same three people talk, cameras off, and a shared board that half the team looks at without touching. And in hybrid mode it is worse: the people in the room run the session, the people at a distance watch it.

None of this is inevitable. Here are nine practices that make an online retro at least as good as an in-person one, often better.

1. One screen per person, even in the room

In hybrid mode, the rule that changes everything: if even one person is remote, everyone takes part as if they were. Everyone writes their cards from their own computer, on the same board. A flipchart in the room with a camera pointed at it is a two-speed meeting.

2. Start on time, even if someone is missing

Waiting for latecomers in silence, cameras on, is the worst possible start: it sets a mood of waiting and penalizes those who were on time. Open the room a few minutes early, fill that time (a light question, a small game), and start the session at the announced time.

3. Write in silence before talking

Remotely, whoever speaks first steers the whole discussion, and speaking up on a video call costs more than around a table. So set aside a timed period of silent writing, where everyone writes their cards without seeing anyone else’s. Everyone comes to the discussion with ideas of their own, and the quietest people have as many cards on the board as the most talkative.

4. A timer everyone can see

Online, you lose track of time even faster than in a room. A shared countdown on every screen makes the length of each step explicit: the facilitator no longer has to interrupt someone to say time is up, the clock says it for them.

5. Vote before discussing

A video-call discussion that follows the order the cards appear in never ends. After grouping, everyone spreads their votes over the topics that seem most important to them, and the team discusses them in vote order, most supported first. If time runs short, it is the lowest-priority topics that get dropped, not the most important ones.

6. Everyone looks at the same thing

“Which card are you talking about?” is the most-heard sentence in online retros. When a topic is being discussed, it should be displayed large on everyone’s screen, not hunted for on a board each person scrolls in their own way. Presenting it is the facilitator’s job.

7. Anonymity when trust is lacking

A new team, a sensitive topic, a manager in the session: some things don’t get written under your own name. Running the session anonymously often brings the real topics to the surface. It is a session setting, decided before starting and announced clearly: one anonymous card among signed ones protects nobody.

8. React without interrupting

On a video call, two people talking at once means nobody understood. Give the team a way to react without taking the floor: an emoji or a comment attached to the card being discussed. The facilitator can see at a glance what has consensus and what deserves giving someone the floor.

9. Finish with named, visible action items

Remotely, what isn’t written down doesn’t exist. Every action item leaves the session with an owner and a due date, in a place the whole team can open again: not in the meeting notes someone will send “later”. This point is covered in detail in why retro action items never get done.

The right tool does half the work

A facilitator can enforce most of these practices by hand, on an online whiteboard. But they then spend the session policing rather than facilitating. A tool designed for retros carries them instead. Which tools, and at what price: see the comparison of online retrospective tools.

That is SquadRetro’s approach: a waiting room that keeps the team busy before the start, cards hidden during the brainstorm, a shared timer and votes, cards presented one by one by the facilitator on everyone’s screen, reactions and comments attached to cards, anonymity as a session setting, and action items with an owner and a due date. The full flow of a session is described in the guide to running an agile retrospective.