Retrospectives with Miro vs Echometer

Case Study: Agile teams at relaxdays

Initial Situation

3 months Relaxdays tests retrospectives with Miro vs Echometer

For a period of 3 months, 2 teams at Relaxdays conducted their retrospectives with Miro and two others with Echometer. Some of the retrospectives took place remotely, hybrid or completely on site. The goal was to compare Echometer and Miro as a retro tool with respect to the three comparison criteria.

The facilitators of the retrospectives and, in some cases, the teams themselves were interviewed after each retrospective using a questionnaire to document their experiences.

The comparison criteria

The quality of the retrospective
The effectiveness of the further development of the teams
The support of follow-up

About Relaxdays

Relaxdays GmbH was founded in Halle (Saale) and is now at home in many cities - including Halle, Leipzig, Dresden and Könnern. We are the largest e-commerce player in Central Germany and sell our products on platforms and our own webshop to customers throughout Europe. We develop our own agile software, plan all logistics processes and create our content in-house. We work across team boundaries, try out new paths, are courageous and innovative. We continue to grow and are looking for fresh minds who want to develop further with us.

Testers in the context of the case study were the product owners, who at the time of the field report also assumed the role of Scrum Master in parallel for their teams:

Sebastian Böhm - Product Owner ; Melanie Pufahl - Product Owner ; David - Head of Software Development

The findings from the comparison

Echometer vs. Miro for retrospectives

1. Satisfaction of the teams

The good news is that the retrospectives led to a high level of team satisfaction with both Miro and Echometer. What is special about Echometer: The ROTI is automatically queried and recorded at the end of the retrospective as part of the check-out.

2. Derive & track measures in the retros

While the retrospectives produced just as many measures with both tools, Echometer offers the advantage that these are also automatically tracked and resubmitted for the next retrospective. Through the explicit mapping of measures, Echometer is the more effective and holistic solution in terms of measure tracking compared to Miro.

David Liebefinke

Head of Software Development

"I think it's incredibly important and fundamental that teams feel the retro time is well spent. Otherwise, they will hardly leave motivated to develop further and implement the measures found with motivation."

3. Collect feedback and generate insights

Good inputs are collected through the open questions in the retrospectives in both Miro and Echometer. Team members report in both cases that they had the opportunity to easily share their feedback in the retrospective. Two special features should be emphasized in the "Feedback & Insights" section of Echometer: Firstly, the team can also collect feedback asynchronously before the retro thanks to the Echometer survey. Secondly, the health check items and the associated "food for thought" in Echometer lead to reflections and insights that the team would most likely not have come up with without them.

"In some cases, we found that teams only came across important topics through Echometer's standardized preliminary surveys & health checks and were then able to work on them in the retro."

Scrum Master

@Relaxdays

4. On-site retrospectives

Using Miro, teams can work together on a whiteboard on the laptop during retrospectives. With Echometer, team members can also use smartphones to provide feedback. On-site retrospectives will at least partially take place classically on the physical whiteboard in the future and the results will then be uploaded to the retro tools.

5. Simplicity of the moderation

The moderation of retrospectives takes place in Miro on a white canvas and therefore requires a certain amount of preparation. In Echometer, topics are automatically suggested by the retro themes and Co., so that you can prepare a coherent retrospective with just a few clicks. The structured format in Echometer has also proven its worth in that the teams are simply able to carry out retrospectives independently, even if moderation is spontaneously cancelled.

6. Bonus at Echometer: Integrated Agile Health Checks

In Echometer, checks can be set up both at team level and at cross-team workspace health level, making team and organizational development traceable. The results are recorded directly in retrospectives, discussed there by the team members and, if necessary, translated directly into measures.

The conclusion

Miro Whiteboard vs Echometer

Miro and Echometer are two very good tools for team retrospectives - especially in remote and hybrid setups. The approaches, in turn, could not be more different: While Miro is set up as a generalist whiteboard, Echometer scores with functions that are specially designed for retrospectives and make life easier for Scrum Masters and automatically make progress in team and organizational development measurable.

"I find the consideration of the question "What do our retros actually bring?" and "How do we develop as a team?" still far too unnoticed in agile everyday life. Echometer provides very good impulses and opportunities for this."

David Liebefinke

Head of Software Development

Echometer

The tool specifically for the success of agile teams with retrospectives and health checks

Try Echometer for free

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At a glance:

54+ Retrospectives Templates
One-Click Setup of the Retrospective
Participation possible via PC or smartphone
Health Check Items with Templates
Topic prioritization in seconds
Interactive whiteboards
Action items with one click
Cross-team comparison metrics
Visualization of all important findings