While you deliver
Retrospective Theme Analyzer
Read a team's retrospectives together instead of one at a time, and see what keeps coming back, what the team really cares about, and which actions have not stuck.
Export the retro board for several sprints into one spreadsheet: sprint, column, note and votes. It is read inside your browser; nothing is uploaded, and who wrote each note is never read.
Retrospective notes
Drop a spreadsheet here
An export from the retro board, several sprints in one file: the sprint, the column (went well, didn't go well, ideas, actions), the note and its votes. Who wrote each note is never read.
Every retro looks new; the notes are not
A retrospective is read once, at the end of the sprint, and then the board is archived. Read one at a time, each note seems fresh. Read six sprints together and the same complaints come back in different words: the stand-up ran over, stand-ups overran again, the daily stand-up still runs long. When the team agreed an action about it, and then agreed the same action again three sprints later, the first one did not work.
How often, and how much
Retro boards blur two different things. How often a theme comes up says it is persistent; how many votes it gets says the team cares. A theme raised every sprint with few votes is a grumble; one raised once with the most votes on the board is a warning. The page keeps them apart.
Nobody is picked out
Authors are never read. A role or team column can split themes by role, and any role with fewer than three notes, and any theme with fewer than three notes within a role, is left out, so the split cannot point at one person. Note text is shown as the team wrote it.
What this does not do
It reads words, not meaning: themes come from word lists shown on the page, and two notes about the same thing in completely different words will not be matched. It does not judge the team or rank people. It is for the team, to see its own patterns, and for whoever facilitates the next retro.