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 all over Europe. We develop our own agile software, plan all logistics processes and create our content in-house. We work across team boundaries, try new ways, are bold and innovative. We continue to grow and are looking for fresh minds who want to develop 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 resulted in high team satisfaction with both Miro and Echometer.
What makes Echometer special is that 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 retros produced measures equally with both tools, Echometer has the advantage of also automatically tracking and resubmitting them for the next retrospective.
The explicit mapping of measures makes Echometer the more effective and holistic solution in terms of measure tracking compared to Miro.
3. Collect feedback and generate insights
The open-ended questions in the retros gather good input in both Miro and Echometer. Team members in both cases report that they had the opportunity to easily share their feedback in the retrospective.
Two special features should be highlighted in the "Feedback & Insights" section at Echometer: First, the team can also collect feedback asynchronously before the retro due to the Echometer survey. On the other hand, the health check items and the associated "food for thought" in Echometer lead to reflections and insights that the team would very likely not have come up with without them.
4. On-site retrospectives
Through Miro, teams can work together on a whiteboard in retrospectives on a laptop. At Echometer, team members can also use smartphones to provide feedback.
In the future, on-site retrospectives will take place, at least in part, in the classic way on the physical whiteboard and the result will then be uploaded to the retro tools.
5. Simplicity of the moderation
The moderation of retrospectives is done in Miro on a white canvas and therefore requires some preparation.
In Echometer, the retro themes and co. automatically suggest themes, so you have a coherent retrospective prepared with just a few clicks.
The structured format in Echometer has also proven successful in that teams are easily able to conduct retrospectives on their own, even in the event of spontaneous facilitator failure.
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 specifically designed for retrospectives and make life easier for Scrum Masters and progress in team and organizational development automatically measurable.
Echometer
The tool specifically for the success of agile teams with retrospectives and health checks
Possible without a credit card and even without registration.
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