RetroDeck
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How RetroDeck works

A retrospective is a 45-minute conversation that decides what the team will do differently next sprint. The format matters because the conversation has a load-bearing job: surfacing the things people don't want to say. RetroDeck is built around removing the social and structural barriers that block that signal.

The anchoring problem

When a retro board fills up live, every card is anchored on the cards that arrived before it. Whoever types fastest sets the frame for the whole session — not because their opinion is most important, but because being first is structurally privileged.

RetroDeck's solution is technical, not procedural: during the collect phase, your card text and author identity are not sent over the network to other clients. You can watch the WebSocket frames in DevTools and verify it. Only after the host advances to reveal does anyone's content fan out.

Phases

The flow is host-driven and every optional phase can be skipped:

  1. Collect. Everyone types cards. Only you see your own cards. Other participants see column counts ticking up — that's it.
  2. Reveal. The host clicks reveal; all cards are broadcast in (optionally) shuffled order. Anonymity is applied per your board's anonymity mode (always anonymous, hidden until reveal, or per-card author choice).
  3. Group (optional). The host can merge similar cards into a single voted-on group. Useful when several people surfaced the same theme.
  4. Vote (optional). Each participant gets dots (default 5) to allocate across cards and groups. The host can optionally hide live counts to prevent vote-piling.
  5. Discuss. Cards sorted by vote count. The team talks. Action items can still be added to the actions column.
  6. Finished. Read-only forever (or until 14 days pass with no activity, at which point the board is deleted).

Anonymity modes

The host picks one at board creation:

  • Always anonymous. Author identity is never sent to other clients, ever. Best for retros where psychological safety is actively in question.
  • Hidden during collect. Anonymous while cards are being written, attributed after reveal. Default. Best for healthy teams who want context but not anchoring.
  • Per-card author choice. Each card has an anonymous checkbox. Authors decide per-card.

What we don't store

No accounts, no emails, no analytics on card content. Boards live for 14 days after the last activity, then they're deleted. There is no "export your data" flow because there is no data to export — when the board is gone, it's gone.

FAQ

What is a sprint retrospective?
A short structured meeting at the end of an agile sprint where the team reviews what worked, what didn't, and what to change. Originally codified in Scrum but used across XP, Kanban, and most modern team practices.
How long should a retrospective take?
For a two-week sprint, 45-60 minutes is typical. Longer cycles (quarter, release) warrant 90 minutes. The format matters less than the discipline of running one every cycle.
Why anonymous?
Power dynamics. Junior engineers will not openly criticise senior engineers; reports will not openly criticise managers. Anonymous-by-default removes the social cost of honesty so the team gets the real signal.
What is dot voting?
Each participant gets a small number of "dots" (votes) to place on the cards they think matter most. It surfaces priority cheaply — no consensus debate, no Robert's Rules — and respects the team's time.
What phases does RetroDeck use?
Collect (cards hidden) → Reveal → optional Group → optional Vote → Discuss → Finished. The host can skip optional phases at any time. The team can run a 10-minute retro or a 60-minute one depending on the depth needed.
Does RetroDeck collect analytics?
No analytics on card content. No third-party trackers. Boards live for 14 days after the last activity then are deleted from the server entirely. No account, no email, no PII.
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