A retrospective mind map your team will actually use

Open the Retrospective template

The Retrospective template is one of the 13 starters Canvasola ships with, filed under brainstorming in the gallery. It arrives as a root called Retrospective with four branches: What went well, What did not go well, Ideas and Action Items. Ideas holds one child, Try next sprint, and Action Items holds one child, Owner.

Those four branches are the skeleton of a retrospective a team will use, because they separate three kinds of speech. Two branches are about the sprint that just ended, Ideas is about the next one, and Action Items decides whether any of it changes anything.

Pick Retrospective from the gallery, which the Templates button in the mind map toolbar opens, or reach the same list from the command palette with Ctrl/Cmd+K. The shortcut cheat sheet lists the keys for adding branches, renaming them and moving around the map while the meeting runs.

• Four branches: two about the sprint, one about the next, one about action
• The template arrives nearly empty, which is the point
• Rename the branches to the wording your team uses

Note: Choosing a template replaces the open map, so keep anything you already have in another workspace tab before you start.

Set the three columns you will use

The template gives you four branches, and the first three are your columns: What went well, What did not go well and Ideas. The fourth, Action Items, is the parking lot rather than a column, so keep it separate. Rename the three to whatever your team says, such as Went well, Not so well and Try next.

Name a column for the thing it produces, not for the feeling. "Not so well" collects complaints, while "What slowed us down" collects the specific event you can then analyze. The label of a column decides the quality of everything under it.

Set a limit before the meeting starts, because the loudest voice fills the first column otherwise. Three or four cards per column is enough for a two-week sprint, and the limit is what makes the clustering work later on.

• What went well, What did not go well and Ideas are the columns
• Action Items is the parking lot, not a fourth column
• Name a column for the action it produces
• Three or four cards per column, agreed in advance

Add one card per observation

A card is one node holding one observation, and the label should be the observation rather than a topic. "The staging deploy broke the demo on Tuesday" is a card. "Deployment" is a topic, and topics turn a retrospective into a list of headings with nothing under them.

Write cards the way somebody would say them, because the team will read them back during the meeting. The node icons come from a set of seven emoji, enough to mark the kind of card: a warning for the ones that hurt, a pin for the ones that repeat, a star for the ones worth keeping.

Add a card with Tab inside the column and another with Shift+Enter beside it. The rich note on a card is where you put who said it and any number that matters, such as the two hours lost on Wednesday.

1. Write the observation. A card holds one thing that happened, with the day and the impact in the label.
2. Mark the kind of card. Use the seven-emoji icon set to separate what hurt, what repeated and what worked.
3. Capture the detail below. Put the person and the number in the rich note so the card stays short enough to read aloud.

Cluster the cards into themes

Cards become useful when they repeat, so grouping is the next piece of work. The template's Ideas branch is where a theme goes: add a child node named for the theme, such as "Release process", then hold Shift and drop the matching cards onto it. The pattern becomes visible.

Three cards under one theme is a signal. One card is an anecdote and two is a coincidence, while three cards about the same thing is a pattern the team can act on. Clusters of one or two belong back on their own, because promoting them turns the retrospective into a list of worries.

You can also cross-link a card to a theme instead of moving it, which keeps the column intact and shows the pattern with a tube. Links work between any two nodes and carry no label, so put the theme name in the note of the card. The cross-link guide covers how they behave.

• A theme is a child of the Ideas branch
• Three cards under a theme is a pattern, two is a coincidence
• Hold Shift and drop a card onto a theme to move it
• Cross-link instead when you want the column intact

Vote on what to fix first

Voting turns a pile of cards into an order, and the vote has to be visible. Canvasola has no voting widget, so the count lives in the card itself: add a child node with the number of votes, or put a star icon on the cards that won, and keep the tally in the label.

Vote on the fix, not on the problem. The question in front of the team is which of these we change next sprint, and the card about the most annoying problem does not always win that vote. A card nobody can act on collects votes and then nothing, which is how a retrospective turns into a complaint session.

There is no Top 3 Picks branch here, so make the shortlist yourself: three child nodes under Ideas, named for the three changes you are taking on. Three is a number a team can deliver, and it stops the meeting ending with nine good intentions.

• Vote on the change, not on the complaint
• Count the votes in a child node or with an icon
• Three fixes is what one sprint can absorb
• Keep the tally in the note of the card

Park the actions where you can see them

The Action Items branch is where a retrospective turns into work, and the template gives you a child called Owner to start from. Replace it with one child per action and write the owner and the date in the label, exactly as in a meeting note.

Put the detail in the rich note, because an action reading "Priya to fix the deploy script, Friday" still leaves the question of what done looks like. Add the note with the steps and anything that has to be agreed first. The meeting notes guide covers the same format for actions.

Then park it where nobody loses it. Layers are the mechanism: the 2D layer tabs scope the map to one layer, and a map holds up to 8 layers. Press 3 to open the 3D layer stack, add a layer called Actions, move the Action Items branch onto it, and press 2 to keep editing that layer in 2D.

• One action per child, with an owner and a date
• The rich note holds the definition of done
• Put the actions on a layer of their own

Note: The 3D layer stack needs WebGL, and deleting a layer keeps its nodes rather than removing them. If the stack will not open on your machine, leave the actions in the Action Items branch and rely on the collapsed view instead.

A checklist you can reuse

• The three columns are named for the things they produce
• A card limit was agreed before the meeting started
• Every card holds one observation rather than a topic
• Cards that repeat are grouped under a theme on the Ideas branch
• The vote counts the changes the team will make
• The shortlist has three items and not nine
• Every action has an owner, a date and a note describing done
• The actions sit on their own layer so the next sprint sees them

Common mistakes to avoid

• Topics instead of observations. A card that says Deployment gives the team nothing to discuss. Write the thing that happened, with the day and the impact, and let the theme emerge later.
• Voting on the complaint. The vote should choose a change, not rank grievances. If the most painful card wins and nobody can act on it, the retrospective produces a better mood and no better sprint.
• Nine actions from one hour. A retrospective that ends with nine improvements ends with none. Pick three, write them as actions with owners and dates, and leave the rest as ideas.
• Promoting every card to a theme. Clusters of one or two are coincidences, not patterns. Promoting them turns the map into a list of worries and hides the three cards that really matter.
• Leaving the actions on the board. An action that stays only in the retrospective map is forgotten by the next sprint. Park it on its own layer and it is still on screen when the sprint starts.

Frequently asked questions

How is the Retrospective template different from a normal notes template?

The template separates three kinds of speech: what happened in the sprint, what the team wants to try next, and what will be done about it. That last branch is the difference, because a retrospective without actions is a review, and a review does not change a sprint.

Can the team vote inside the map?

Not with a built-in voting widget, because Canvasola has no voting tool. Keep the count in the map instead, as a child node with the number of votes or a star icon on the cards that won, and note the tally so the next sprint can see how it was reached.

How do I move a card into a theme?

Hold Shift while you drag the card onto the theme node, and the branch moves to that new parent. The toast at the bottom of the screen confirms the move. If you would rather keep the card in its column, leave it there and draw a cross-link to the theme instead.

Does the map work for a team that is not in one room?

It works if somebody collects the cards afterwards, but it is not a shared board. Canvasola has no live editing and no published links, so the practical route is one person writing the map during the meeting and exporting it as Markdown or a plain-text outline for anyone who was not there.

This guide is part of the template guides collection. For the wider product tour, read the complete Canvasola guide, and keep the keyboard shortcut cheat sheet open while you work.