7 best sprint retrospective tools in 2024

In product development, the sprint retrospective is a pivotal moment—it's a time to reflect, regroup, and refine strategies for better performance in subsequent cycles. For product teams, this is more than a routine check-in; it's an opportunity to dissect processes, celebrate successes, and tactically address any stumbling blocks encountered along the way. But how can teams maximize the value of these retrospectives?

Sprint retrospectives help keep teams and products on track, but that shouldn’t mean slowing projects down just to find time to meet. Leaders need to invest in the right tools to run effective sprint retrospectives, including tools that let you do more in your own time. This way, you can make meetings shorter—or cancel them altogether, and boost productivity. 

Ultimately, the right tool can be the difference between a good team and a great one. In this article, you'll discover the best sprint retrospective tools in 2024, including pricing, key features, and who it's best suited for. This way, you can turn retrospectives from unproductive meetings into catalysts for continuous improvement. 

Want more productive sprint retrospectives? 
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What to look for in sprint retrospective tools

Sprint retrospectives can involve plenty of moving parts, depending on the team's objectives, dynamics, and the specific challenges they face. This means, you need to look for tools with the following features to make sure you're covering all your bases: 

• Collaboration. Look for features that make it easy for your team to communicate, contribute, and work together, such as real-time editing, commenting, and voting functionalities. 

• Ease of use. The last thing you want is for your team to spend precious time fumbling with the tool instead of focusing on the retrospective itself. 

• Integration. A great retrospective tool should seamlessly integrate with all the tools you already use for project management, or not require integrations at all. This allows you to easily correlate retrospective feedback with specific tasks, projects, or sprints. 

• Anonymity. To ensure honest feedback, look for a retro tool that provides an option for anonymous suggestions or polls. This can help team members feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts and concerns.

• Actionable insights. The tool should facilitate turning feedback and discussion points into actionable tasks or stories for future sprints. This way, you’re not just identifying problems—you’re solving them. 

The top multi-purpose tools for Agile teams

Let's dive into the best multi-purpose tools out there for Agile and Scrum teams—so you can host more impactful sprint retrospectives and get more done during and between sessions. 

1. Switchboard

Switchboard is an online collaboration platform that helps you keep the team on the same page. You can share ideas, give feedback, and make decisions in interactive rooms for projects, dashboards, and meetings. The expansive canvas in each room gives you space to visually organize and share applications, files, and documents. You can work in the room by yourself or teams can flip on video to meet in the place where all their work is ready to go.

People use Switchboard to organize and share their work. One popular use case is a Switchboard room dedicated to sprint retrospectives. Drag, drop, and organize all the tools you’re already using on the room’s canvas. Meeting agendas, sticky notes, action item trackers, team and user feedback—they all can be used and viewed side by side in a Switchboard room. Then, share the room with anyone on your team who was involved in the sprint. They’ll have access to everything in one place: apps, docs, files, and the latest comments. Because everything for your project is a shared space, you can move work forward during the entire sprint. 

Key features:

• Expansive canvas to add browser-based apps, websites, PDFs, and images
• Switchboard AI, which can answer questions and generate summaries of room activity
• Multiplayer browsers that support any website or web-based application, so you can work side-by-side on anything—without sharing screens 
• Room recording so people can catch up on meetings or leave video notes for each other 
• Sections to organize content
• Presentation mode, to get people to focus on your view
• Built-in whiteboard and whiteboarding tools
• Sticky notes, shapes, notepads
• Apps including timer, voting, polls, icebreaker generator, and open questions
• Comment threads on any image, video, or sticky note in a room so you can communicate in context 
• Audio and video conferencing 
• In-room chat
• In-app support
• Up to 200 rooms for projects, meetings, and more
• Up to 500 members and unlimited meeting guests
• Up to 300 GB storage per workspace
• App for macOS and Windows

Pricing:

• Free: Includes limited features, rooms, and members, as well as up to 40 minutes for video calls (ideal for very small teams or individuals).  
• Pro: $15 member/month for up to 200 rooms and 500 members; plus Switchboard AI and additional storage.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing.

When you sign up for free, you get access to all Pro features during your trial. After that, you can choose to keep your Pro plan or move to the free plan with limited features, rooms, and members. 

Best for:

Switchboard is ideal for highly collaborative teams that want to easily share multiple documents and tools with each other. 

2. Jira

Jira's flexibility in creating and managing tasks, customizable workflows, and strong support for Agile practices like Scrum and Kanban make it a top choice. You can create, prioritize, assign, and track tasks and issues efficiently, ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks.

Jira enables Agile teams to create and prioritize user stories, track sprint progress, manage backlogs, and conduct successful sprint planning and retrospectives seamlessly. With features like burndown charts, velocity tracking, and customizable dashboards, Jira empowers Agile teams to get real-time insights into their projects, make data-driven decisions, and continuously improve their processes.

Key features:

• Advanced security features like role-based permissions and access control 
• Velocity tracking
• Burndown charts 
• Agile templates and customizable dashboards
• Bug tracking
• Timelines, Scrum, and Kanban boards
• Project reporting and analytics 
• Integrates with popular add-ons and apps
• Drag and drop automation

Pricing:  

*Pricing is based on a user tier of 10 users and an annual billing cycle 

• Free plan
• Standard: $7.75/user 
• Premium: $15.25/user
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Best for: 

Jira is suitable for teams of various sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. But given its complexity and ability to scale, it's best for large-scale organizations and teams comfortable working within an Agile environment. 

3. Notion

Notion is a knowledge management platform you can use to create dedicated workspaces, share information, and communicate async. For example, you can create a page for sprint retrospectives, and select a template from their library with sections like "What Went Well," "What Could Be Improved," and "Action Items." Then you can get feedback from your team in real time and async, and easily categorize and prioritize action items.

Key features:

• Dedicated workspaces 
• Customizable drag-and-drop templates 
• Collaborative documents with real time edits, notifications, comments, discussion threads, and @mentions 
• Calendar, Kanban, and Gantt views
• Automated workflows and tasks 
• Action item tracking 
• Anonymity options
• AI assistant to auto-fill tables and provide help with writing and queries 
• Search and filtering 
• Page history to track changes
• Integrations with other tools, like Slack, Figma, Jira, and Google docs 
• Mobile app  

Pricing:

• Free Plan 
• Plus: $8/month per user, billed annually 
• Business: $15/month per user, billed annually 
• Enterprise: Custom pricing 

Best for: 

Companies of all sizes that need a single source of truth for knowledge sharing and documentation, so they can get more done from sprint planning to sprint retrospectives. 

Pro tip: Use your favorite tool or a combination of the tools listed in this article in Switchboard. With more visibility into tools, apps, and files across all stages of your sprint, you can prevent information silos and keep the sessions you do have more productive. 

The best retrospective tools for highly collaborative teams

Now that you have an idea of the best multi-use tools on the market, let's take a look at the top tools specifically for sprint retrospectives. 

4. Neatro

Neatro is an online Agile retrospective platform that comes with 30 interactive templates you can choose from, depending on your preferred retrospective format. For instance, The Six Thinking Hats format, or Start, Stop, Continue. 

Along with easy-to-use templates, you also get access to plenty of activities like Zombie Apocalypse or Easter Egg Hunt, to name a few. These can help your team dive deeper into your respective challenges and solutions in a creative and engaging way. If their templates don't suit your needs, you can also create your own, building on pre-existing templates with the ability to drag and drop various elements. 

Key features: 

• Icebreaker feature
• 30 pre-existing templates 
• Action item tracking 
• Timer for each step of the retrospective
• Anonymous commenting
• Comment categorization 
• Real-time voting 
• Smart assistant for generating action plans 
• Reports for assessing Return on Time Invested (ROTI) 

Pricing: 

• Premium: $23.20/month per team
• Pro: $31.20/month per team
• Enterprise: Custom pricing 

Best for: 

Experienced Agile teams with a set format and retrospective structure that require detailed retrospective reports.

5. Reetro

‍With the option to create a retrospective board in one click, Reetro removes friction across key retrospective steps. For example, preparing for the retro, gathering feedback, tracking action items, and managing unplanned activities. Reetro lets you mask comments for independent thinking, so you can run completely anonymous retrospectives. It also gives you the ability to invite unlimited team members, set roles, and collect feedback async and in real time. 

Key features: 

• Project health check 
• Polling feature
• Default and customizable templates
• Interactive boards and cards
• Integrations with Jira and Confluence
• 24/7 email support
• Built-in timer to track sprint retrospective duration
• Ability to mask comments for independent thinking
• Create, assign, and follow action items
• Ability to lock your board to preserve its originality 

Pricing: 

• Free plan
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Best for: 

Scrum masters running sprint retrospectives on a budget, that need a comprehensive, reliable, and secure tool—with all the core features. 

6. Echometer

‍Echometer is a comprehensive platform that facilitates retrospective meetings and supports team development. For example, you can assess and monitor team health, including psychological safety, which is crucial for effective collaboration. The tool also offers analytics and insights based on retrospective data and team health check results. Beyond gathering insights, you can define, assign, and track actions within the platform, ensuring that insights lead to meaningful change and improvements in subsequent sprints. Plus, you can create and customize retro templates. 

Key features: 

• Team and project health check
• Food for thought sections to inspire creative thinking
• Automatic action item tracking
• Async commenting and feedback 
• Integrations with popular tools
• Pre-defined and customizable retrospective templates 
• KPIs and analytics tracking 

Pricing: 

• Free
• Pro: €49/month per team
• Enterprise: €120/month per team

Best for: 

Echometer offers facilitation support, providing tips, educational content, and best practices to ensure productive and meaningful sessions. This makes it especially useful for teams that are newer to Agile or Scrum methodologies, who require detailed training and analytics to improve project outcomes. It's also a great option for new Scrum leaders or Scrum Masters, as it tracks KPIs on the impact of Agile coaching. 

7. TeamRetro

TeamRetro is a sprint retrospective and health check tool that offers a variety of templates, catering to different retrospective styles and themes. This helps you keep meetings fresh and focused, while simple surveys capture key health metrics like team motivation. It also uses automation to create meeting summaries, gauge team sentiment, and understand key themes and emerging trends—giving you actionable insights after each retro. 

Key features: 

• Auto suggest for grouping similar ideas
• Fully customizable templates 
• Discuss and capture comments and actions
• Dashboards and reporting to track actions and meeting cadence
• Assign, track, and view actions 
• Built-in presentation mode and timer
• Team health check
• Reports for assessing Return on Time Invested (ROTI) 
• Icebreakers, check-in/out questions, reactions, polls
• Presentation mode 
• Anonymous brainstorming and voting functionality 

Pricing: 

• Single team: $25/month (up to 25 team members)  
• Small Org: $60/month (3 teams included) 
• Large Org: $90/month (6 teams included)
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Best for: 

TeamRetro offers a structured way to manage retrospectives across multiple and cross-functional teams, making it a great fit for larger organizations or those scaling their Agile practices.

The best sprint retrospective tools: Do more during and between meetings

There's a lot to focus on before, during, and after the sprint retrospective—like collecting feedback, assigning and tracking action items, and measuring success. When you add 'make retrospectives more productive' to the list, Scrum Masters or meeting facilitators might just need a helping hand. 

That's where sprint retrospective tools come into play: The right tools can help keep teams and product development on track without slowing projects down just to find time to meet. That's why leaders need to invest in tools to run effective sprint retrospectives, including tools that let you do more in your own time. 

For example, Notion, Jira, Neatro, Reetro, Echometer, and TeamRetro, are all great options for keeping sprint retrospectives and people organized. Plus, when you use them in Switchboard, you can get more visibility into project work and the ability to provide feedback in a shared space. This way, you can make meetings shorter and more productive.

Want more productive sprint retrospectives? 
Switchboard lets you plan and host retros from one place—so it's easy to work in context and keep teams aligned.
Sign up free