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Christian Heidemeyer

Spotify Health Check: Everything You Need To Know

In this article, I'll explain how the Spotify Health Check works, who it's suitable for, and what you need to keep in mind to ensure your company will benefit from it.

Basically, key performance indicators (KPIs) act like a clinical thermometer. You can use them to check if you're sick or if you might need to take a paracetamol to feel better. KPIs uncover where things are lagging and if you need to change something to make the numbers better - i.e., to make your project or team healthy.

The problem: With KPIs, you're only reaching for the clinical thermometer when something may have already gone wrong. The damage is already done. Then it takes a lot of time and nerves to correct. 

But what if you already preemptively check how the ongoing health of your team or project is doing?

Well, that's exactly what the Spotify Health Check does. 

By the way, if you prefer to consume content via videos: This short video is a piece I published with the most important facts and 6 tips about the Spotify Health Check:

What Is the Spotify Health Check Model?

The Spotify Health Check is a workshop where teams look back at their work to date and evaluate it. The model goes back to the Swedish audio streaming service: Spotify

Teams use various indicators in the Spotify Health Check, such as: 

  • collaboration,
  • value of what is delivered
  • fun
  • Learning experience

They use these aspects to assess the status quo of their project and collaboration. In a moment, I'll explain exactly which indicators the Spotify Health Check Model uses and what they mean. The Spotify Health Check comes in two forms - more on that below.

For the impatient among you – these are some of the questions asked in the Spotify Health Check, including facilitation hints (in case you are planning a workshop aka Spotify Health Check Retrospective). You can even start this retro in our tool.

Spotify Health Check Retro: Delivering

🏅 Value

Item: We deliver great stuff! We’re proud of it and our stakeholders are really happy.

Facilitation tips: 

  • Which topics did not bring the hoped-for benefit? Are there any patterns?
  • What are our stakeholders most disappointed about right now?
 

🤖 Suitable process

Item: Our way of working fits us perfectly.

Facilitation tips: 

  • What is bothering us about the way we work?
  • When was the last time we changed the way we work?
  • Which proposed change was never implemented? What is stopping us?
 

🏎 Speed

Item: We get stuff done really quickly. No waiting, no delays.

Facilitation tips: 

  • Which requirements / stories got stuck in the implementation?
  • What causes delays when they occur?
  • What's a great example of a quick move lately?
 
If you like this retro format and questions, you can open them directly in our team development tool Echometer:
Open this Health Check Retrospective

The Spotify Health Check is possible in two variants:

Spotify Team Health Check

In the Spotify Team Health Check you conduct the workshop - as the name suggests - with your team.

Spotify Squad Health Check

In the Spotify Squad Health Check, multiple teams from one department or company working together on (typically) one feature look back at what work they've done and evaluate it. 

The difference is comparable to the different frameworks for different dimensions of agile working: In individual teams you work with Scrum (equivalent: Spotify Team Health Check). If you think about different "scaled levels" or hierarchies works with scaled agile frameworks, one uses the following Scaled Agile Framework: Scaled Agile Framework SAFe® or similar models (equivalent: Spotify Squad Health Check).

In the Spotify Health Check, the evaluation of the work done so far covers what has gone well and what has gone badly so far. In Agile referred to as: Retrospective. 

What's more, it shows why certain things have gone well or badly. This way, the Spotify Health Check tool also reveals where you can start with your team to lead a project to succeed more efficiently - and to make your employees feel satisfied and valued in the process.

In other words, the Spotify Health Check Retro ensures that your project and your team are happy and healthy. It is a tool to measure and strengthen autonomy, culture, and continuous learning within a team.

Spotify Agile Health Check Indicators 

The Spotify Health Check provides 11 indicators - Spotify calls them dimensions - that teams and squads can use to reflect their work. 

How can teams use these indicators?

To use the indicators for a retrospective, teams can use simple traffic light colors as codes:

GREEN: Things are going very well. Although this does not mean that everything is perfect the team or squad is satisfied and does not see much space for improvement. 

YELLOW: There are some problems that need to be solved. However, it is not a disaster.

RED: There is a lot going wrong. Improvements are urgently needed.

In addition, the teams indicate which trend they see with an arrow on the respective traffic light color. Compared to the last Health Check, has the indicator improved, worsened or remained the same?

Arrow up: Improvements are visible.

Arrow down: It is going worse.

No arrow: Things are consistently the same.

The following image from Spotify gives a nice overview of what such a health check might look like: Spotify Squad Health Check.

What does this mean for each indicator? What does good and bad mean for each dimension? To guide your team for its assessment, the Spotify Agile Team Health Check has specific behavioral anchors, these in turn can be found on the so-called: Spotify Health Check Cards. You can download the Spotify Health Check Cards as a PDF below at the click of a button:

For you to include the behavior anchors directly in your next retrospective, here they are again as text:

Delivering value:

  • Good: We deliver great stuff! We're proud of it and our stakeholders are really happy.
  • Bad: We deliver total crap. We are ashamed of that. Our stakeholders hate us for that.

Easy to release:

  • Good: Releasing is simple, safe, painless and mostly automated.
  • Bad: Releasing is risky, painful, lots of manual work and takes forever.

Fun:

  • Good: We love going to work and we have a lot of fun together.
  • Bad: The work is boring.

Health of Codebase:

  • Good: We're proud of the quality of our code! It is clean, easy to read and has great test coverage.
  • Bad: Our code is a pile of dung and technical debt is raging out of control.

Learning:

  • Good: We are constantly learning new things.
  • Bad: We never have time to learn anything.

Mission:

  • Good: We know exactly why we are here and we’re really excited about it!
  • Bad: We have no idea why we are here, there's no high lever picture or focus. Our so called mission is completely unclear and uninspiring.

Player or pawn:

  • Good: We are in control of our own destiny! We decide what to build and how to build it.
  • Bad: We are just pawns in a game of chess with no influence over what we build or how we build it.

Speed:

  • Good: We get stuff done really quickly! No waiting and no delays.
  • Bad: We never seem to get anything done. We keep getting stuck or interrupted. Stories keep getting stuck on dependencies.

Suitable processes:

  • Good: Our way of working fits us perfectly.
  • Bad: Our way of working sucks!

Support:

  • Good: We always get great support and help when we ask for it!
  • Bad: We keep getting stuck because we can't get the support and help that we ask for. 

Teamwork:

  • Good: We are a great team that works great together.
  • Bad: We are a bunch of individuals who neither know nor care what the others on the team are doing.

Important: You don't have to use these indicators exactly as Spotify has defined them - they are only an orientation. For some projects and organizations, you can certainly adopt the model as it is. For others, you will have to adapt it to your situation. You can: 

  • use fewer factors
  • use more factors, and
  • adjust or replace factors.

In short, you need to change the indicators to fit your project and your team. You have to adapt them in such a way that they provide you with as many insights for improvement as possible.

Before you read any further: The following video is a very specific tutorial from me on how to do the Spotify Health Check for free. I highly recommend you watch it next for a better overview.

By the way, if you do the Spotify Health Check, we recommend reflecting in detail on the results. We wrote a detailed article about it, which you can find here: Spotify Health Check Retrospectives . 

We have even developed 4 different Spotify Health Check Retros based on the "behavioral anchors". You can open and explore these in our retro tool without login – feel free to have a look:

Open Spotify Health Check Retro now

How does a Spotify Health Check Model work?

Here is how to conduct a Spotify Health Check in three simple steps:

1. Distribute Spotify Health Check Cards.

Firstly, to keep your team in mind and check, you give them the Spotify Health Check Cards. These will show exactly how they evaluate each indicator. This way, they can orient themselves on how they feel for each factor. Then the team can give a more concrete rating; helping to further assess the current status of the project and the cooperation within the team.

2. Evaluate indicators

Now you go through each Spotify Team Health Check Card with your team. You do this by reading each card out loud once, including the two examples of "good" and "bad."

You then ask the participants for their assessment: green, yellow or red? And: What is the tendency of the color? The team or squad can and should discuss each indicator before giving an assessment. After all, even during the discussion, you can gain more important insights into where you can work together to improve. 

Be wary that your employees will not always agree on the rating. In fact, it is quite normal. Nevertheless, in order to get a tendency and record it in the Spotify Health Check, you can, for example, take a vote with points. 

Each team member has one vote on whether they think an indicator is positive, neutral or negative. In the end, you take the assessment with the most votes. However, you can also find other ways to set a rating that fit your team and project. Here you can see how this can look practically implemented: Whiteboard practice.

3. Record evaluations

Record each evaluation in writing in order to get a clear picture of how you can positively influence your collaboration and the progress of the project. It is also noteworthy to directly jot down initial ideas and suggestions for improvement. This will save you a lot of work in the end.

Online or offline?

Essentially, the Spotify Health Check works better offline than online. Discussions are more lively and productive face-to-face - they are the most valuable part of the Spotify Labs Team Health Check. This is due to the fact that when your team or squad is discussing, they gain important insights into what they can improve on. Furthermore, as Servant Leader, you'll learn how to efficiently support your team to make faster progress.

However, sure to say the Spotify Health Check Model also works online. If exceptional situations such as the current corona crisis or a work culture such as a remote companyrequire that you exchange information online, you can accordingly prepare the Spotify Health Check suited to the circumstances. It is possible to do via Zoom, Skype or Microsoft Teams and use a whiteboard tool or Echometer to facilitate your retrospective.

Depending on team and squad size, you should plan in total 60 to 120 minutes for the Spotify Health Check Model to take place.

One more thing: The evaluation at the end of the Spotify Health Check does provide you with important data. However, this data is only the compressed image of the discussion. Depending on the indicator, project and team, this can sometimes be misleading.

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Is the Spotify Health Check Model always suitable?

The Spotify Health Check is suitable for these kinds of groups:

1. Teams

By discussing each indicator in the Spotify Health Check Retro, a team learns what works for them as a unit - and what doesn't. It helps members understand what drives their progress and satisfaction within the group. For example, in this way they can, adjust work rhythms, distribute tasks differently, or reassess priorities.

2. Squads

If squads take the Spotify Health Check, the individual teams understand how other teams work better and what problems they have with a more clear vision. This gives them a new perspective on how they work and how to approach tasks mentally and practically. In addition, teams can give each other tips where sharing common knowledge is encouraged!

3. Employees who support a team or squad

Release Train Engineers, Scrum Master and Agile Coaches who do not work directly in a team or squad, but support them in an accompanying capacity, receive an overview of the status quo of the teams via the Spotify Health Check. They learn where they can support their teams better, so that they work more efficiently and are more satisfied. 

For example, they can uncover patterns between different teams and derive important insights from them. In other words, the Spotify Health Check helps you identify where exactly you should start improving teams, squads or projects.

By the way, this is exactly what we do with our Echometer tool, enabling a constant agile health check in combination with retrospectives (also in scaled agile environments) - in companies like Miele and T-Systems, among others.

What you have to keep in mind for the Spotify Health Check Model - 7 tips

To get the most out of your Spotify Health Check, pay attention to these points:

1. Customize the Spotify Health Check. 

Every team is different. Every project is different. Therefore, you have to accordingly adapt the Spotify Health Check to your work organization and culture. What this means in practice is that you need to adapt the Spotify Health Check Cards to your needs and the context of the work. This is the only way to get useful results.

For you as Servant Leader, this is a good leadership exercise because you need to be very detail-oriented about what culture you want to build, what kind of work you want to see on your team, and what members of your team can expect from you.

2. Use a wide range of questions

The Spotify Health Check model covers a wide range of different questions addressing different contexts of work. When adapting the Spotify Health Check Cards to your organization, make sure you maintain a variety of questions. That way, you'll make sure you're covering different perspectives. This way, you can gain particularly diverse and comprehensive insights. 

However, also realize that the questions are just starting points. Think of the Spotify Health Check Cards as a sample shortlist. Teams and squads often have a good eye for which questions don't lend themselves to evaluation. After all, they are "in the thick of it." Therefore, they should be free to change, remove, or add questions.

3. Don't ask too many questions

Variety is great. However, you should make sure that you don't use too many questions for the Spotify Health Check. When using too many questions, you may end up with overlapping content. This could make the final output look less clear and unambiguous. The number of questions provided by Spotify (i.e., 11) is certainly a good orientation to follow. There should not be that many more questions for an insightful workshop.

4 Use questions from the team environment

The questions for the Spotify Health Check should relate to the environment in which your team or squad works. You should not include hard data - such as velocity or cycle time - in your questions. This way, you keep it less "threatening." You're emphasizing that your goal is to support your team and improve collaboration; not to evaluate their performance. 

5. Realize that this is subjective data

Any assessment your team makes is subjective. Because: It's not hard data like KPIs, but personal feelings of individual team members. These can sometimes be contradictory, but often they are consistent. 

However, you should keep in mind that the data from a Spotify Health Check is an approximate reflection of reality. It is therefore worthwhile for you to review the results of this together with your team before taking concrete action.

For example, you can ask yourself why a team or squad is particularly optimistic, or whether an assessment corresponds to the actual state of affairs.  

6. Be careful with comparisons

The Spotify Health Check tool may tempt you to compare assessments between teams. However, this is problematic. Each team evaluates itself according to its own points of view. It is therefore usually not possible for you to make a fair comparison between teams.

However, you can use comparisons to identify dimensions where several or all teams need your support. A comparison is therefore especially useful for uncovering potentials and thus improving the management of your teams.

7. Do not use the Spotify Health Check as an assessment tool for management

The Spotify Health Check is an assessment tool for you as Servant Leader - not for your executive management team. Therefore, it should always be about giving honest assessments for your team in the workshops - and not about delivering particularly good assessments. Only when teams and squads know that it's not about "scoring points" can they be honest with themselves - and thus deliver important insights. 

For you as a leader, this means you should not publish the results of Spotify Health Checks outside of your team (also known as the Vegas Rule).

How does a Spotify Health Check benefit your team?

A Spotify Team Health Check provides you and your team with these benefits:

Awareness of the status quo

You facilitate and provoke valuable discussions within your team to uncover challenges and potentials - for the project, for the team, and for you as a Servant Leader.

Qualitative discussions

You facilitate and provoke valuable discussions within your team to uncover challenges and potentials - for the project, for the team, and for you as a Servant Leader.

Development of action items

You can develop actions based on the gained insights to improve collaboration, project results and work atmosphere.

Sharpening the mission

You can sharpen the vision and mission of a project or team and ultimately deliver better work.

Communicate desired behaviors

The results of the Spotify Health Check tool reveal what team members want from you as a servant leader for factors such as communication, collaboration, feedback, professional support, leadership and trust.

Spotify Squad Health Check Online

If you want to perform the Spotify Squad Health Check online, there are several tools available, most of them for a fee. An overview of some of the Spotify Health Check online tools can be found here: Retro Tool Comparison. Echometer can also help you here – just write us!

Conclusion: The Spotify Health Check Model

The Spotify Health Check uncovers problems and potentials within your team and project. In turn, this helps you to develop measures and solutions that make your team happier and deliver better results. 

By the way, info on other agile metrics and the question which is perhaps the best agile metric can be found answered in this article: Agile KPI's.

By the way, if you are still looking for a suitable retro board (with 60+ agile retrospective formats), this post can help you: Sprint Retro board free: Comparing the 7 best retro boards or 22 Refreshing Agile Retrospective Templates in 2023

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Need a team boost? Do this: The Spotify Health Check Retrospective!

First Health question: "😍 We love going to work, and have great fun working together."

Sounds good? Try our retro tool for free below.

Open this retro now

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FAQ about the online retrospective tool

No, you do not need to log in to Echometer or register to test the Retro Board and Retro Tool in Echometer.

You can try out Echometer's Retro Board via the following link without logging in: Try a Practice Round

First, simply register for free in Echometer. Then navigate to the workspace for which you would like to purchase the retro tool. If you haven't already done so, you can do so here: Create account in Echometer 1:1 tool

You can then manage your subscription (for both the retro tool and the 1:1 software) within the workspace settings.

You can choose from various payment methods when upgrading.

If you do not have access to your company's credit card yourself, you can simply add a buyer as a workspace admin in your Echometer workspace so that this admin can carry out the upgrade for you.

In Echometer there are two separate software solutions that are available within each workspace in Echometer:

  • 1:1 tool: Software for planning and conducting 1:1 meetings and tracking employee development
  • Retrospective tool: Software for planning and moderating retrospectives and tracking team development through team health checks

Both are independent software solutions, so they can be used separately from each other.

However, they work according to the same principles and aim to achieve the same added value: The continuous improvement of agile teams. In this respect, the simultaneous use of both software solutions is recommended.

Yes, you can assign administration rights to any number of users at both team level and workspace level. Please note the following:

  • Only workspace admins can take out and manage a Echometer subscription for a Echometer workspace.
  • Only workspace admins can create additional teams and name or remove additional workspace admins.
  • Team admins can appoint and remove additional team admins and team members for their team

If an agile team does not yet have much experience with retrospectives, a tool that effectively guides you through the retrospective and offers many templates is recommended:

  • Echometer is known not only for being an intuitive online retro board, but also for offering a very effective guided flow through the retrospective. At the same time, Echometer offers whiteboards that can be flexibly integrated into the retrospective. This makes Echometer very beginner-friendly.
  • Echometer also has extremely versatile and creative templates for retrospectives and team Health Checks that stimulate team reflection. Inexperienced teams in particular are very grateful for the food for thought in Echometer.

This makes Echometer the best software recommendation for beginners with agile retrospectives or Scrum beginners. By the way, you can try out Echometer for free without logging in: Echometer Try out the retro tool

Yes, you can collect and measure the eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) in Echometer's Health Checks and surveys for retrospectives.

The eNPS can be evaluated in Echometer both at team level and across teams. For example, you can use the heat map in the Workspace Health Dashboard for cross-team evaluation.

The Echometer Retrospective software is designed to guide teams through the retrospective process with maximum ease and effectiveness, following best practices.

The steps and their sequence can be customized using the navigation within the retro. By default, a retrospective in Echometer is structured in this way:

  • Icebreaker
  • Review of open measures from past retros
  • Collect feedback (first Health Checks, then open questions)
  • Prioritization of feedback
  • Deriving action items
  • Conclusion of the retrospective with the "ROTI score" (Return on Time Invested)

Additional whiteboards (e.g. for workshops, for analyzing problems or for brainstorming measures) can also be added spontaneously at any point using the Retrospective navigation.

Yes, the Echometer Retrospective Tool offers various export options for retrospectives.

The most popular method is to generate a PDF that contains the feedback, the votes from the prioritization and the measures of the retrospective. It is also possible to share the retrospective via a sharing link.

A summary of the retrospective is also automatically sent to other participants by email after the retrospective, provided they are registered as team members in the team.

Yes, the online retrospective tool Echometer is one of the few retrospective software tools that also optimally supports the recording and tracking of measures:

  • Integration: You can also record measures directly in Jira via an integration.
  • Automatic follow-up: All open measures from past retros appear automatically in the measure review of the next retrospective for tracking purposes. This gives the team an overview of which measures are currently still open and creates a commitment to implementing the agreed measures.
  • Reminders: Measures are assigned to a person responsible, who automatically receives a reminder email when the measure is created so that the measure is not forgotten. In addition, each participant can flexibly receive action reminders via email and manage the action status at any time in the Echometer Retro Tool.

This means that Echometer's tool for team retrospectives has extensive and well thought-out functions for action tracking.

Yes, Echometer allows grouping and prioritizing (voting on points) of feedback on the Retrospective Board.

All participants can simply drag and drop cards onto each other and group them together.

There are 2 modes for prioritizing:

  • In "Live Voting" (the recommended mode), the moderator selects how many votes each participant should have and then starts the hidden voting. As soon as all votes have been cast, the moderator can close the live voting. During the voting, you can see how many votes are still to be awarded. After the voting is closed, the cards in the columns are automatically sorted in descending order so that the cards with the most votes are at the top.
  • In "Facilitated Voting" mode, the moderator simply selects how many votes are allocated to each topic. This mode is only necessary in exceptional cases.

Feedback can be optimally processed in the team using Echometer and the measures derived from it can also be easily recorded in Echometer in direct connection with the feedback.

Yes, with the online retrospective software Echometer you can collect asynchronous feedback on the retrospective in advance via a survey.

This means that obtaining feedback is asynchronous and you can make the most of the time spent together in retrospect.

Yes, absolutely: The online retrospective software Echometer is optimized for distributed teams working remotely and includes various options for interacting with each other in real time.

Both the retrospectives and the whiteboards are synchronized in real time for all participants and you can also optionally display your colleagues' cursors.

Yes, the online retrospective tool Echometer is a free tool that you can try out without logging in.

You can get started right away using this link: Echometer Retro Tool without login.

To invite other participants to your online retrospective in Echometer, you will need to register. Participants only need to enter their email address to join the retrospective, but do not need to log in.

After the retrospective, participants can optionally log in to access the summary even after the retrospective has ended.

Yes, Echometer offers many high-quality templates for retrospectives and the respective steps of a retrospective.

Echometer is the retrospective software tool with probably the most integrated retrospective template ideas and patterns:

  • The retro templates in Echometer contain sample questions for the retro board. These are often creatively based on specific topics in –, such as the "Kart racing retrospective" or the "Time travel retrospective".
  • Some retro templates also contain templates for Health Checks. For example, to measure the Spotify Health Check or psychological safety in the team.
  • When creating a team, you can choose from various team templates for management teams or scrum teams, for example. The team templates then put together a suitable team Health Check for the team.
  • For icebreakers in the retrospective, Echometer has over 50 ideas for sample questions that can be used spontaneously and randomly in a retrospective via a random generator.
  • And then there are whiteboard templates in Echometer, which contain ideas for check-ins, team building and the development of measures.

One of the greatest strengths of the Echometer Retro Tool are the various templates for retrospectives, which can be used as patterns for the creative design of your own retrospectives.

Here is a short list of the samples as an insight into the retrospective templates:

  • Happy, Wondering, Sad
  • Three Little Pigs
  • Team Morale Health Check
  • Easter and Christmas retrospective templates
  • DORA Retrospective
  • 5 agile values Health Check
  • Spotify Squad Health Check Radar
  • Psychological safety Health Check
  • DORA Retrospective
  • Unique retrospective templates such as the "7 Dwarfs Retrospective" or the "Football Retrospective"

If you are interested in the Retrospective Tools templates, take a quick look at the tool: Echometer Retro Templates & Templates

Yes, Echometer is an online tool for retrospectives that offers Jira integration.

With the Jira integration in Echometer, measures from Echometer can be created in Jira boards with a single click.

This makes Echometer a good retrospective software tool if your team is already using Jira.

Echometer is not available in the Atlassian Marketplace, but as separate software via my.echometerapp.com callable.

Yes, Echometer can be called a starfish retrospective tool, because with Echometer you can easily perform the starfish retrospective on an interactive online retrospective board.

Hot tip: If you are interested in the Starfish Retrospective, take a quick look at Echometer. Because the special thing about Echometer is that you can try out the starfish retrospective immediately (time-saving, without logging in) at this link: Echometer Starfish Retrospective Access without login

The Echometer Sprint Retrospective software has very extensive features, both for beginners and experts. The following features form the core of the tool:

  • Structured retrospective flow with integrated whiteboards for flexible brainstorming on individual focus topics
  • Retrospective board for brainstorming, presenting, grouping and voting with live collaboration
  • Moderator tools such as a timer, anonymity settings and control over the agenda step (focused for all participants)
  • Integrated tracking of measures from past retrospectives with automatic resubmission and incl. Jira integration
  • Unbiased brainstorming: Concealed cards on the retro board as well as on the integrated whiteboards prevent participants from influencing each other during the brainstorming session.
  • Simple, quick setup of the tool: Many users report that they were able to start their first retrospective in less than 10 minutes.

The following features are Echometer's unique selling points that are relevant for experienced Scrum Masters and team leaders:

  • Dashboard with retrospective history, including duration of the retrospective, number of participants and ROTI score
  • PDF and Markdown export of the retrospective after completion
  • The retrospective can take place asynchronously (e.g. also via a survey that is sent out before the retro) or in real time
  • Anonymous feedback via survey or on the Retrospective Board
  • Anonymous voting and prioritization of feedback on the retrospective board by awarding points
  • Query or measurement of the "ROTI score" (i.e. Return on Time Invested) after the retrospective for continuous evaluation and improvement of the retrospective by team members
  • Creation of Health Check surveys or pulse surveys as a happiness check and mood barometer in order to recognize trends (e.g. increasing dissatisfaction) in the team at an early stage
  • Health Check KPIs and agile metrics in the analysis dashboard including history
  • Health Check Surveys or pulse surveys also possible across teams

The Echometer Retrospective Tool offers the following features for retrospective template ideas, questions and samples:

  • 50+ Retrospective Template Ideas including Keep Stop Start, Happy Wondering Sad and the Starfish Retrospective
  • 200+ Retrospective Health Check questions and templates
  • Retrospective Icebreaker Library with 50+ fun retrospective check-ins to promote psychological safety and team spirit etc.
  • Whiteboard templates for visual, interactive retrospective icebreakers (including seasonal highlights for e.g. Easter and Christmas)
  • Whiteboard templates to structure and facilitate the creation of measures

Yes, the retrospective software tool Echometer is easy to use even for beginners who are not yet familiar with retrospectives.

Many users report that they were able to carry out their first retrospective in Echometer in less than 10 minutes of preparation!

Thanks to the structured process in Echometer, carrying out the retrospective is also very easy.

On the testimonial page of Echometer you will find numerous confirmed user reviews: Echometer Testimonials

Echometer is the best software tool for retrospectives compared to alternative retrospective software tools such as Retrium, EasyRetro, Reetro, Neetro and TeamRetro for three reasons:

  1. Large selection of creative templates for retrospectives: Users of Echometer confirm that Echometer has a uniquely wide range of retro board ideas.
  2. Echometer has a simple and intuitive structure for retrospectives that guides teams through retrospectives using best practices. This also makes Echometer very beginner-friendly.
  3. Echometer offers a generous free version.

Users of Echometer particularly appreciate the unique function of Echometer to insert Health Checks into their agile retrospectives: These agile Health Checks make a massive contribution to stimulating team reflection and actively involving every team member in the retrospective.

To summarize, even alternative retrospective software tools such as Parabol do not have the unique features of the Echometer retrospective tool, which are both simple and effective. Therefore, it can be said that Echometer is the best software app for conducting agile sprint retrospective meetings.

Yes, in Echometer you can get anonymous feedback from the team.

Echometer is one of the few online retrospective tools that can be used to collect feedback anonymously.

In Echometer, feedback can even be collected anonymously before the retrospective via asynchronous surveys, which is unique among online retrospective tools and distinguishes Echometer positively from tools such as the retrospective software Parabol.

Yes, Echometer offers a generous free version of the online retro tool that can be used permanently free of charge for one team. This includes all functions for team retrospectives.

You only have to switch to a paid version for additional functions such as SSO, multiple teams or an unlimited number of retrospectives.

Further information on the variants of Echometer's retro tool can be found on the pricing page here: Retro-Tool Price List

The greatest strengths of the Echometer retrospective tool are its impact on time savings, participant engagement and productivity.

  • With hundreds of ideas for retrospective templates in combination with the integrated surveys, Echometer makes it very easy to prepare great retrospectives in just a few minutes.
  • Thanks to the guided steps and the playful and interactive retrospective board, implementation is child's play, focused and results-oriented at the same time.
  • The integrated tracking of measures and team health makes it easier to recognize trends in the team at an early stage and ensure that measures from retrospectives are not forgotten

Combined with the unique features of the agile Health Checks and flexible whiteboards, Echometer is one of the best, if not the best, retrospective tool on the market, even better than the better-known Parabol retrospective tool.

Yes, Echometer's retro tool is technically secure and GDPR-compliant.

Several European financial institutions and insurance companies have chosen to purchase Echometer's retrospective tools over other alternatives due to strict regulatory requirements.

The data is stored and securely processed in Germany. The contract for commissioned data processing with details on the technical and organizational security measures of Echometer's processing can be viewed here: https://echometerapp.com/gdpr-and-security/

Echometer's tool for retrospectives offers the following integrations:

  • Jira (for easy tracking of measures from retrospectives in Jira boards)
  • Google login
  • SSO (only in paid version)

Echometer are particularly positive about the increase in the effectiveness of retrospectives and the improved measurability of team development through Echometer.

Here are some officially confirmed quotes from users and customers of the Echometer software tool, all of whom hold leadership positions in agile teams:

Duane Hill, Scrum Master Coach:

  • "Echometer is like a combination of Miro and a really smart retro board. It even provides metrics on the effectiveness of my coaching so I can easily spot trends in team development. I really love this tool – highly recommended for anyone who wants to make their retrospectives more effective!"

Lena Tölke, Agile Coach at Deutsche Bahn Sales:

  • "Thanks to the targeted questions in Echometer, we keep coming up with new insights for our further development in retrospectives and can make these transparent and measurable for all team members."

Clemens Schöne, Scrum Master at Communardo Products:

  • "Echometer is like the combination of Mural and EasyRetro – I am thrilled! With Echometer, remote retros can work much better and even be fun!"

Patrick Böttcher-Exner, management position at Relaxdays GmbH:

  • "One major advantage is that Echometer allows us to carry out and track both remote and on-site retrospectives in one tool."

Carina McLane, Senior Software Developer at Volvo:

  • "As a Scrum Master, it's not about the tools, but this one really makes the work a lot more enjoyable. After two years of experience with Echometer, I can recommend it to anyone who wants to enrich their retrospectives and understand their team better!"

Echometer is the perfect retrospective software tool for busy team managers, team leaders, engineering managers, but also scrum masters and Agile coaches in distributed or hybrid agile teams ("remote teams").

Users particularly appreciate how much time the tool saves for retrospective moderators and how it increases the engagement of participants in the retrospective. Therefore, people who value time savings, retrospective effectiveness and engagement benefit most from the functions of Echometer.

In addition, Echometer offers an easy, playful introduction to retrospectives and is therefore particularly suitable for teams that do not yet have much experience with retrospectives or are just starting out with agile working methods.

The Echometer retrospective software works as follows:

  • Simple preparation of retrospectives using templates for retro formats, surveys and whiteboards
  • Intuitive and step-by-step implementation of retrospectives. Possible both online and on-site. Simply use the QR code on site so that participants can take part via their smartphone with the Mobile Companion app.
  • Automatic follow-up through export functions and integrated tracking of developments and measures including retro archive.

The implementation of a retrospective in Echometer is as follows:

  • The retrospective board allows the agile team to start with a fun welcome screen where they can wait for the rest of the team while playing an interactive game.
  • Once all participants of the retrospective have arrived, continue with an icebreaker question. Echometer has several icebreaker question templates, including both open-ended questions and visual whiteboard templates with workshops and small games.
  • After the icebreaker, you reach the screen for tracking measures: Here, the team reviews the open actions from past retrospectives and decides whether to keep, close or discard the actions. This step is unique to Echometer and significantly improves the quality of the continuous improvement process of agile teams.
  • Then it's on to Team Health Check: all team members answer various questions, for example a question about satisfaction in the team or questions about psychological safety. This type of question increases engagement in the retrospective, even with introverted team members, as well as the creation of agile KPIs to track the mood in the team over time.
  • Then you continue with the retrospective board, where everyone can leave anonymous feedback on open questions – if this has not already been done in advance via a survey. There are hundreds of retrospective templates for different retrospectives on the Echometer retrospective board.
  • Feedback is first written face down on the retro board so that the participants do not influence each other. The moderator can then reveal the feedback column by column.
  • Once the feedback on the retro board has been uncovered, presented to the team and any queries about feedback have been clarified, the prioritization, i.e. the voting, can continue.
  • Voting in Echometer is anonymous. During the voting process, you can see how many votes have already been cast and how many are still open.
  • At on-site retrospectives, you can also vote using your smartphone.
  • As soon as the voting is complete, you can derive measures. To do this, you can either create a measure directly for the feedback or open the feedback on a new whiteboard to analyze the problem in more detail and brainstorm ideas for measures.
  • The brainstorming of measures on a separate whiteboard within the retro is a point of differentiation for Echometer compared to other tools for retrospectives such as Parabol. In Echometer, you can create a separate whiteboard for each topic within the retro and thus optimally control the focus of the discussion.
  • Finally, Echometer enables the retrospective to be concluded by anonymously asking the entire team about the ROTI score on a scale of 0 to 10 (i.e. the "Return on Time Invested"): This helps the team and in particular the retrospective moderator to continuously improve the quality of the retrospectives within the team itself.

Given this unique, structured and flexible retrospective process, combined with the range of functions, Echometer is often described as the best tool for agile retrospectives.

Further questions?

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