Retrospective board

[Jason Chayer]

Has anyone set up a retrospective board in Jira without a plugin?

We are moving to cloud soon, but am wanting to get this set up in our current Jira instance.

Curious on how you structured this?

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jason Chayer 

I recommend not using Jira to create a retrospective "board".  It will likely become too limiting as the team both evolves its retrospective methods and encounters situations which just do not "fit" your board constraints.  (e.g., a just-in-time RCA versus a retro at the end of a sprint)

Instead, consider how your team works today to decide what might support them:

• Working in person / on-site: try a whiteboard, sticky notes, and conversation
• Working remotely: investigate any of the many free (or for purchase) whiteboarding / collaboration tools

And when the team feels a need to track work for retrospective findings / experiments, use Jira issues on your current delivery board to support that.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Jason Chayer]

@Bill Sheboy - I do like the idea of not having it in Jira. However, what is enticing, is that I can create Jira issues off of the retrospective meetings and link it back to the retrospective task if need be. 

If this is done, I can then add it to a future retro meeting for follow up and have that information linked there.

[Bill Sheboy]

Yes, and...several of the whiteboarding tools have integration for Jira, to create items from the board, link them, etc.  For example, Miro boards can do this, and they are very helpful for retros, story mapping, RCAs, etc.

Disclaimer: I do not work for Atlassian, Miro, or any addon vendor.  I'm just another customer making a suggestion based on my experiences :^)

[Jason Chayer]

@Bill Sheboy - I appreciate that. I will take a look at Miro or other white boarding tools.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[Chris Boys]

Hi @Jason Chayer couldn't you use the Whiteboarding tool in Confluence? That way you can facilitate a 'seamless' connection with your Jira Issues and keeps all of your data within Atlassian.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Chris Boys 

This question is for Server / Data Center version, and whiteboards do not exist in those platforms' Confluence versions.  Here is the suggestion to add it: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-83249

And, Confluence Cloud added whiteboards after this question was originally posted.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Nikola Perisic · Accepted solution]

Hello @Jason Chayer 

Scrum template wouldn't really be suitable since it is focused on starting and ending the sprints.

I would go with a Kanban board where you can create columns like: What went good, What went wrong, What we can improve, Questions. For each of these columns there would be statuses that would be called similar to the columns (no transitions added).

For Action items, I would link Confluence to that specific project, where I can reference it on the next retrospective

For the next retrospective, I would create a new board where I would reference everything from the previous retrospective and also add new things to the new retrospective.

[Jason Chayer]

@Nikola Perisic - thanks for the feedback. So, I assume I should create a new project for this? The reason I ask is because of the status types, no transitions, etc...

[Nikola Perisic]

@Jason Chayer Well, not necesserarly. You can create a new Kanban board within your project, you just select the Create board -> Kanban Board -> Choose your existing project

[Jason Chayer]

@Nikola Perisic - that I understand. But, and I may be thinking about this incorrectly, won't the board take on whatever statuses the project already contains?

I do not want to add additional statuses to the existing project. I would think that would just muddy up the project.

[Nikola Perisic]

@Jason Chayer  Yes, you are right, it would get muddy indeed. The best option is to go for a separate project and to create the retrospectives there.

[Jason Chayer]

Thanks @Nikola Perisic . It seems like I ran across others who have mentioned that you can have more than one workflow in a project. If so, can you have statuses that only show up on one board, and not the other.

Example

Board One (development board): To do, in development, testing, etc...

Board Two (retrospective board): What went well, What to improve, Questions, etc...

If I add the statuses for Board Two, will they show up as options for Board One when someone is trying to move issues across their board.

Regarding issue type, I would just use Task as the only option for Board Two.

[Luis Ortiz - Catapult Labs]

Hi all! 
I understand you are looking for a solution without using an add-on. But let me suggest our add-on Agile Retrospectives for Jira, since we were also looking for such solution about 6 years ago, and couldn't find something that fit our needs, we got to work on building our own, and have been improving it ever since. 
By being seamlessly integrated to Jira, it's a lot easier easier for teams to track, discuss, and act on feedback. 

This add-on centralizes retrospective insights within the Jira ecosystem, providing visibility and accountability across distributed teams. Key features include customizable templates, easy action item tracking, and automated reminders, all designed to streamline the retrospective process. It is super easy to see previous sessions history, and a dashboard with all the resulting action items. You can filter them by user, wether they are marked as done, or not, and many more features that users have asked for during the years. 

Check it out! And reach out to me, I will be providing a code to extend your trial or provide an additional discount on the annual version for any member of the Atlassian community. luis.ortiz@catapultlabs.com

@Nikola Perisic 

@Jason Chayer 

@Bill Sheboy 

[joe kohm]

Hi @Jason Chayer 

I recently created this Jira app: Better Retros in Jira  if you're still looking for a retro solution.

Feel free to message me if you have any questions, I always love to chat about anything agile/development related!

Joe

[Alexey Pavlenko _App Developer_]

Hi @Jason Chayer,

I would say it completely depends on the way you conduct retros. If you retro failed metrics and analyze each issue separately, then I would suggest you review the app Multi-team Scrum Metrics & Retrospective I have developed and implement part of it manually. Of course, it would cost you some time and you wouldn't be able to implement everything from there manually, but it will be free and meet your needs.

• Overview (2 min): YouTube Video
• Demo in 4K (21 min): YouTube Video

Best regards,
Alexey