Canonical page: https://tellenze.com/help/retrospectives

# Run a retrospective workshop

Move from private reflections and votes to shared themes, actions, and a workshop report.

## Choose a retrospective workshop

Use **Retrospectives** to reflect with invited teammates, identify shared themes, and turn learning into follow-up work. This is a facilitated workshop with private writing and voting. Use **Reviews** for an authored report with published reader editions; your personal weekly review is a separate individual workflow.

The feature must be enabled. Only explicitly invited, active participants can enter a room, including administrators. Facilitators control its phases, timer, accepted Looper suggestions, actions, and report. Participants write their own notes, help group themes, vote, and discuss.

## Set the work, people, and board

Choose **New retrospective** from **Retrospectives**. Setup has three sections:

- **Work & dates:** choose work items, Focus groups, milestones, a date period, or a combination. Check **From**, **Through**, and **Time zone**, then **Preview work & contributors**. The selection can include completed work and relevant changes or discussion; archived sources and work in archived projects or teams are excluded.
- **People:** select participants and co-facilitators. **Use suggested participants** can add contributors discovered in the preview. Everyone must already have permission to read any shared source evidence.
- **Board:** name and order the reflection columns. The defaults are **Went well**, **Challenges**, and **Ideas**; you can add or remove columns to suit the conversation.

Review the suggested **Workshop title** or enter your own, then **Create workshop**. Save setup edits, then choose **Open workshop & send invitations**. Opening freezes the source selection and invitation list; invited people may join later.

## Write privately, reveal, and group

The phases are **Setup**, **Private writing**, **Reveal & group**, **Vote**, **Discuss**, **Plan actions**, and **Closed**.

During **Private writing**, add one thought at a time to the relevant column. Only you can see your notes. You can edit or delete your own human-authored notes during writing and grouping. Select **I’m ready** when finished; readiness helps the facilitator decide when to continue and does not advance the workshop automatically.

When the facilitator continues to **Reveal & group**, notes become visible with their authors. Create themes manually, rename themes, and use **Move to theme** to group notes. Every revealed note must belong to a theme before voting starts.

If Looper is available, a facilitator can choose **Suggest groups**. Review the proposed groups and their notes, then **Accept grouping**. Suggestions do not move notes before acceptance. Refine the result manually or request **Suggest regrouping**.

## Vote and discuss priorities

During **Vote**, each participant can select up to three themes with **Vote for theme** and change choices with **Remove my vote**. Ballots stay private during voting; totals appear when the facilitator moves to **Discuss**.

Use **Themes & discussion** to compare the results and **Add to discussion** to record observations or decisions under a theme. The facilitator can set a timer for a phase, but time running out never advances it. Use readiness and conversation to decide when the group should proceed.

## Convert learning into outcomes

In **Plan actions**, facilitators use **Propose action** or review Looper's report and action suggestions. **Accept suggestions** adds reviewed material to the workshop. Looper is optional; every step can be completed manually.

Review each action's title, description, acceptance criteria, destination project or enabled team, and assignees. **Create work item**, followed by **Save & create work item**, creates linked follow-up work. Only the approved action content is shared with its destination; the workshop remains private. Use **Defer** or **Dismiss** for proposals that will not become work now.

In **Report**, capture themes, decisions, and next steps, then choose **Approve & save report**. **Close workshop** requires a saved report and every proposed action to be created, deferred, or dismissed. Participants can return to the closed workshop to read its outcomes.

## Understand evidence and resolve problems

**Work items** distinguishes shared evidence from **Your access only** links. Personal-only sources are excluded from the room's evidence and Looper's context. Invitations do not expand source permissions.

Changed access or archived sources can withhold generated material and the report. Refresh Looper's suggestions, review current evidence, and approve the result again; restoring access does not restore invalidated suggestions automatically. If saving conflicts with another edit, compare the latest version before keeping your draft. Reconnection preserves saved changes; an unsaved note left when writing ends remains available in the composer for copying.