RetroBoard

A lightweight, full-stack application for running productive sprint retrospective ceremonies. Built with Python 3, Flask, SQLAlchemy, and a Vue 3 frontend, this app enables team members to anonymously write and later share feedback and ideas about the last sprint.

What it Does

Built with collaborative teams in mind for an efficient retrospective ceremony:

• 🧠 Write your thoughts in private: Everyone can write down their feedback about the last sprint — but you won’t see what others wrote until everyone is ready to discuss. This keeps the input unbiased and personal.
• 🚀 Fast, clean, no clutter: Just the essentials — no logins, no bloat, no distractions. Open the board, write your thoughts, done.
• 🔐 Fully self-hosted: You can run it on your own servers or environment, so you stay in control of your data — perfect if your company has privacy or security policies.

Features

• Grouping / Filtering: Group and filter your notes in categories which can be either custom or one of the pre-created ones.
• Exporting: Export your boards in many formats.
• Autosave: Automatically saves your note if your browser crashes.
• Brandable: You can add your logo to the navbar to make it blend in with all your other tools in the organization.

Data stored

From the nature of the tool, some data needs to be stored in order for it to work as intended. There are two data storages:

• SQLite DB: The boards, categories and notes are stored in an SQLite DB which is persisted on the host computer for resilience across updates.
• Local storage: Some settings (e.g. visibility, draft note) are stored on the user's local storage in browser. This is needed for some functions to work properly like persisting the state of the note's visibility or the currently drafted note in case of a sudden crash.

Under the hood

• Backend: Built with Python 3 using Flask & SQLAlchemy.
• Frontend: Vue 3 to make the tool fast and simple.
• Database: Using SQLite to store the data locally — where it belongs.

Using the tool

At first, this tool was mainly built for agile retrospective ceremonies but since then it grew up and can be used whereever the team needs a centralized idea gathering board. Here is a generic breakdown of the usage of the tool:

1. Before starting the meeting, create a new board for your thoughts. Everyone at the meeting will add their ideas to this. This board can be a burner board for a single meeting or can accompany the team through their journey across meetings.
2. When the meeting starts, everyone opens the board in the app and writes their feedback to the different categories. Using the hide feature, no-one can see what you wrote.
3. After the team finished writing, the faciliator of the meeting reveals the notes and the team checks them together.

How to run it

The tool lives in a docker container to simple things even futher. It needs to be hosted on your server and expose it to the network, the application will take care of the rest. Make sure you either expose port 8000 or re-route it as you like. Ensure that you assign a persistent directory for storing the database so that its data remains intact across updates.

Here is an example: docker run --rm -ti -v path/to/database:/app/backend/database/ -p 8000:8000 ghcr.io/gulyasgergely902/retroboard

You can also specify a version using tags e.g.: retroboard:1.1.0. The complete list of docker versions can be seen under packages.

How to build it from source

Building from source can provide you with the latest features which are not yet available in the latest release. Please be aware that if you build a newer than released version, it might contain bugs. To open a bug ticket, see Contribution section.

1. Build the frontend using scripts/build_frontend.sh.
2. Create a virtual environment: python3 -m venv rb_venv then source rb_venv/bin/activate.
3. Install the required modules in the environment which are needed to run the app: python3 -m pip install ..
4. Run the app from the backend using flask run.

Contribution

You can contribute to RetroBoard in two ways:

• Contribute via an issue: Open an issue for a feature request or bug report. Use the provided templates which will guide you giving the essential information. Based on current priorities, I’ll add it to one of the milestones and address it in a future release. You can check the milestones with the assigned release date - if any - at Issues / Milestones.
• Contribute via code: Fork the repository and implement the change yourself. Once done, open a pull request. I’ll review your submission and either provide feedback for refinement or merge it. Be sure to check the guidelines in the CONTRIBUTING.md file before submitting a pull request. Also if you choose an existing issue from Issues, make sure to assign it to yourself.