A retro in SmartRetro is a live board that moves through four phases: collect, vote, discuss, done. One person facilitates; everyone else adds cards and votes in real time.
Scheduling
Go to Retros → New Retro. You’ll set a Date, a Sprint name, a Team, and a Template. Two options are worth deciding up front:
- Anonymous Mode hides participant names on cards to encourage honest feedback. It cannot be changed after creation.
- Async Mode lets collecting and voting happen on each person’s own schedule, with deadlines you set for each. Discussion stays live.
Templates
Templates set the board’s columns:
- Default — What Went Well, Needs Improvement, Lessons Learned
- Start, Stop, Continue — Start Doing, Stop Doing, Continue Doing
- Mad, Sad, Glad
- 4 L’s — Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed For
- Sailboat — Wind, Anchor, Rocks, Island
Default and Start, Stop, Continue are available on every plan; the rest are on paid plans — see pricing. On paid plans, the form can also suggest a template for your team, with a reason and an Apply button. You decide.
The four phases
Collecting. Everyone adds cards to the columns. Cards appear for the whole room as they’re written. You can edit your own cards; you or the retro’s creator can delete them.
Voting. Each person gets 5 votes and spends them on the cards that matter most. Votes are toggles — click again to take one back. Emoji reactions are separate and unlimited to one per card.
Discussing. Cards sort by votes so the top concerns lead. On paid plans, the Cluster button groups cards into named themes (it needs at least three cards); click a theme to filter to its cards, and watch for the recurring-theme marker — it means this theme has shown up in past retros too. This is also where discussion becomes commitments: the Action button on any card opens a form with a title, description, owner, due date, and an optional link to a key result.
Done. Closing the retro locks the board and produces a summary: card and vote totals, participants, top-voted cards, and the action items you created. On paid plans, a written summary is generated as well. If Slack is connected, the team channel gets a note that the retro closed. Any action items still open roll into the next retro’s brief — see The brief.
Facilitating
The retro’s creator is the facilitator by default (org admins can also facilitate). Only the facilitator advances phases — Start Voting, Start Discussion, Complete Retro — and can step Back a phase if the room needs it. In async mode, collecting and voting advance automatically when their deadlines pass.
During collecting and voting, the board shows a Since Last Retro card so context from the brief is one glance away. You can dismiss it once the room has seen it.
After the meeting
Follow-through is the point. Head to Action items to see every commitment with its owner, due date, and status — and what happens when one goes overdue.