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Submit ticketParticipating an Online Retrospective in ScatterSpoke Join a team retrospective and leverage all of the features for effective online retrospectives Andrew Dawson
Welcome to the world of virtual reflections! If you're new to ScatterSpoke and wondering how to join your team's next retro and leverage all of the benefits that come with running retrospective online, then you've come to the right place.
As a participant, the two most important components of your role in making the retrospective effective are your attendance and your engagement.
In ScatterSpoke, there are several ways to join a retrospective to make sure getting access is not an issue, even for collaborators outside of the team or organization.
One of the easiest ways to access the retrospective your facilitator has set up is through the public link they generate and socialize among invitees. Everyone with the link can view and edit the retrospective board or canvas. You don't even need to have an account in ScatterSpoke in order to join a retro through the link!
If they choose, facilitators can also gate links to the board to make sure only team members can get in. So, in some cases, you might be required to input the password set by your facilitator to interact with the board.
Some facilitators will also invite team members to join a retrospective via their company email address. In these cases, an invitation will arrive in your inbox with a join link that you can use to access the retrospective board. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Now that you're in, you've covered your bases in terms of attendance successfully. You're in, you're ready to take your contribution to making this retrospective effective to the next level by engaging with the retro board as well as your team members.
As a participant in an online retrospective, you have many opportunities to contribute to documenting the team feedback and generating new ideas by interacting with the retro board in a number of crucial ways.
One of the most precious aspects of your presence in a retrospective is your input. Contribute to the retrospective by adding your cards to the appropriate area of the retrospective board by typing directly in the blank box at the top of each column and clicking enter to submit.
Clicking Enter will submit your idea and generate a card with added functionality that your team members can interact with.
As part of the reflection process, an intrinsic aspect of any retrospective, all team members are expected to contribute ideas to each of the areas of the retrospective board using the feedback cards.
Hint: Contributing one idea per card makes it easier to have focused discussions about one topic at a time when you move beyond the ideation element of the retro into problem-solving conversations with the team.
As you submit your ideas and transform them into cards on the retro board, you can also interact with other team members' ideas by commenting, voting and tagging cards across the entire board.
Interaction will only be limited if your facilitator has turned on the Private Feedback option. In that case, you will only be able to see your own feedback, not anyone else's from the team.
All participants can comment on each other's cards on the retro board to add further detail to the original feedback, ask for clarification or provide links out to additional resources related to the topic. Adding a comment is easy and intuitive through the blurb button at the bottom left corner of every single card on the board.
All participants can vote for feedback they agree with. Facilitators set the maximum number of votes available to each participant, but it is up to team members about how they distribute these votes.
Cards with more votes become a priority for discussion during the time allocated for problem-solving after ideation. The more votes a piece of feedback receives from the group, the higher the chance that it will get discussed and, hopefully, resolved.
Vote for feedback that you'd like to discuss further by clicking on the + icon that appears at the center of each card. ScatterSpoke will count down the number of votes at your disposal based on the facilitator's setting and let you know how many are left as you vote for topics on the board.
If your facilitator has turned on the Private Voting option you will not be able to see your own votes, not anyone else's from the team.
Hint: If there's a topic on the board you're particularly keen to discuss, you can vote for it more than once!
If your facilitator has set a timer for the duration of your online retrospective meeting, as a participant, you will see countdown clock centered at the bottom of your screen, near the edge of the board.
Hint: Keep and eye on the clock to compartmentalize your thoughts during this reflection opportunity, focusing for equal amounts of time in each area of the retrospective and ideating carefully around each of the columns of the retro format you're using.
Do you have everything you need to join your team's next retrospective? Get in touch with our dedicated support team to get extra help whenever you need it.
Based on the discussion among the team members during the retrospective, facilitators should identify the pertinent action items that could improve the process for the group. In ScatterSpoke, cards that make it to the Action Items column of any retro board are flagged by facilitators to join a master list of action items accessible from the Admin's dashboard.
Facilitators can also assign owners to the action items in the master list, which will be visible to anyone who has joined the retrospective meeting through a ScatterSpoke account with an affiliated email address.
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