Lean Coffee Table vs. GoRetro: How to choose the perfect retrospective platform [20223]
GoRetro reviews is our latest blog series where we provide the facts about different retrospective tools – no BS and no hyperbole needed. Keep scrolling for our analysis and to learn more about all the retrospective tools out there. Enjoy! 😊
GoRetro and Lean Coffee Table are two highly popular retrospective tools that have their similarities and differences. Depending on your team, one of the two platforms will surely fulfill all your dev team’s wants and needs. We built GoRetro from the ground up during the Covid era in order to serve modern teams as they navigate this new world of remote/hybrid retrospective meetings. Lean Coffee Table helps distributed teams to run effective 'agenda-less' with the 'Lean Coffee'™ framework developed by Jim Benson and Jeremy Lightsmith.
Lean Coffee Table vs. GoRetro: The high-level comparison
When the time comes to getting your organization’s processes in order, the first step is knowing you need a solution. But the next step, actually picking and onboarding a new platform, is where things can get tricky.
👉 Both GoRetro and Lean Coffee Table offer similar basic functionalities for running your next retrospective meeting, but GoRetro shines when it comes to deep data integration and top of the line security features right from the free tier (and not just for the enterprise tier).
Continue reading below and see how GoRetro and Lean Coffee Table compare for all your organization’s needs.
More Top Retrospective Tools
In addition to GoRetro and Lean Coffee Table, there are many other quality Agile retrospective tools. We researched and reviewed the leading retrospective tools and highlighted the essential information you need to know about each. Whether you're a Fortune 100 company or a smaller startup organizing a retrospective meeting, our review can help you narrow down your choices and decide which retrospective tool is right for your needs. See all of our top picks.
What is GoRetro?
GoRetro is a free SOC-2 certified, online sprint management tool that facilitates the entire sprint process; from planning to retrospective in a simple, collaborative and data-driven way. GoRetro is used by thousands of Agile teams across the globe, from garage startups to the biggest enterprises in the world (over 20% of S&P 500 companies use GoRetro), and constantly praised for its simplicity, ease of use, and flexibility.
What is “Lean Coffee Table”?
Lean Coffee Table is an online tool for distributed teams to do Agile retrospectives. It uses a lightweight framework where attendees create the agenda and focus is maintained with effective time keeping. Attendees can create discussion topics and vote on them to create a prioritized list. Conversations are directed and productive because the agendas for the meeting are democratically generated, and simple timers keep everyone focused on the discussed topic.
Image source: Lean Coffee Table
Features comparison
❗The most important thing to know is that GoRetro is a SOC-2 and ISO 27001 certified, secured by design platform that gives the same level of security for all tiers, whether you pay or not. This is not applicable for Lean Coffee Table.
Both GoRetro and Lean Coffee Table have the same basic features, which will be covered in the next sections. The main difference comes on the integration level. GoRetro utilizes a deeper level of integration. With its advanced data-driven features, GoRetro gives you superpowers: You can say goodbye to juggling endless spreadsheets and tabs. Use your real-time Sprint data to run better retros and improve your team’s performance; get a sense of what is happening, identify gaps in planning, and see what your team actually spends their time on. GpRetro will also allow you to analyze your sprints to identify trends, track improvements and uncover stumbling blocks. On average, we managed to increase participation by 80%. Save time on technical preparation and focus on what's important: getting better.
The GoRetro security team spends days and nights to make sure your data is secured at the highest standards out there. We are SOC-2 and ISO 27001 certified, audited and evaluated by an independent auditor in all aspects of product, infrastructure, and policies. GoRetro has been certified as compliant with their stringent requirements.
Basic features comparison
Agile retrospective: collaboration
Lean Coffee Table and GoRetro have intuitive dashboards that allow you to see all the boards that you are a part of. Both platforms also allow you to create action items and have the team vote on any discussion points to reach a conclusion at the end of a meeting.
Lean Coffee Table has three different roles: facilitator, attendee, and guest. The facilitator creates meetings and boards, invites team members, and sets up other aspects of meetings and boards. The attendee has an account on the platform but does not have control over the boards and meetings. Attendees can only see boards that they have been invited to. Guests can participate in meetings and boards without a Lean Coffee Table account as long as they have a link to the board or meeting.
When it comes to GoRetro, you can assign members of a team different roles as well. The account admin can view and manage all boards, members, create teams, and assign roles. The team admin can view and manage teams and respective boards. Lastly, the team member can only view or create boards within the team they are in.
Sprint retrospective meeting integrations
Lean Coffee Table lets you set up Zoom meetings directly through its platform and use your boards during them.
GoRetro integrates with Jira to help you conduct a more focused/honest retrospective meeting. Incorporate data into the meeting, from iteration burndown and suggested cards, to trends and highlights, and much more.
What GoRetro and Lean Coffee Table users have to say
Lean Coffee Table is not included under G2, but GoRetro is ranked as the top performer of spring 2022. It has plenty of strong reviews and testimonials which mention its data driven insights, simplicity, time saving and boost in participation as core benefits.
Pricing
Lean Coffee Table provides a 30-day free trial. The subscription plans are divided by the number of facilitators you need. One participant costs $10 per month. You get a better rate for more than five facilitators, and you can contact the platform if you need more than 50 facilitators. Lean Coffee Table’s subscription includes unlimited meetings and team members, meeting summaries, single sign-on, actions and notes, and any more premium features.
GoRetro free plan gives you the power to run meaningful retrospectives in a collaborative way. You get one team, unlimited users, unlimited private retrospectives, 5 public boards, and access to all our pre-built templates and advanced facilitation features, wrapped up with the highest level of security.
In the premium tier, users can benefit from advanced features such as integrations, data models, automatic sprint analysis, AI models, and so on.
The security team of GoRetro does not discriminate and offers the same level of security across all tiers. Plus, GoRetro is SOC2 & ISO 27001 certified, ensuring your data is protected by the latest security standards.
We know that the road to a new platform for your organization can seem like a long and complicated one, but by pairing the information we’ve reviewed with your unique insight about your team, it won’t be difficult to find the right retrospective tool to suit your needs. Our core product values are simplicity, ease of use and flexibility. We believe that retrospecting should not take you or your team out of focus or be an obstacle; it should be a fun experience. As such, we’ve made our user interface, features, and overall design seamless and intuitive. From the onboarding process to the meeting itself, GoRetro is your trusted partner.
👉 GoRetro is continuously releasing new features, so be sure to check out our changelog for updates.
👉 You can find useful articles at our Help Center and at our Blog. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to our support team.
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Thousands of scrum teams from Fortune 500 companies, banks, government agencies, and innovative startups use GoRetro to make their retrospectives fun, engaging and effective
Intuitive navigation between functions and menus, easy application but covers everything needed for a retrospective meeting. Great support team - quick response and frequent update of issue' status. I did 3 retro meetings with the GoRetro app and can't really find any difficulties or disadvantages of GoRetro. What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? The team easily communicates their opinion on the sprint; team feedback can be easily commented. Sorting by the number of votes facilitates team discussions in the area of topics for improvement.
Excellent tool that has come in handy on many projects. Don't know what I would do without it
GoRetro is the best retrospective tool I have ever
GoRetro is the best retrospective tool I have ever seen. It has everything we've ever wanted. It includes the ability to create unlimited retro boards, plenty of pre-built fully customizable templates, SOC-2 compliant, invite unlimited team members, comment, vote, drag/drop/merge, create action items, follow up trends in the analytics panel, export, and so on. There is nothing that stands out when it comes to disliking Attempt it! The team is pushing the envelope and putting the customer first (their SLA is out of this world). They also have all kinds of fun/mini tools that help us during meetings (ice breaker questions generator, for instance).Finally, the content on their website is incredible. What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? The main benefit is the boost in participation. GoRetro accomplishes this by allowing users to seamlessly collaborate without hassle. Moreover, I appreciate the different templates, ease of customization and ability to tailor the board to our needs.
The interface is clean and simple to use. The concepts
The interface is clean and simple to use. The concepts map perfectly well to normal retro processes with the ability to customize just enough to fit everyone's needs. The interface offers a column approach where people can vote, comment and transform items into actionable items. The board, when you have too many items to display can get tedious to manage with long columns. There is a timeboxing option but it is completely manual and not bound to individual items but it's not that bad. What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? My retros were done in all sorts of different tools, tried custom Jira boards, tried integrated tools like in VSTS, used an excel spreadsheet. Nothing ever feels complete. GoRetro offered a good balance of everything to fulfill my needs.
Easy to use, good templates and analytics. The sprint
Easy to use, good templates and analytics. The sprint summary looks very promising giving more insight than some Jira reports. Minor bugs as it's still in development. Good tool, give it a go if you are using Scrum What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? Running retrospectives remotely has always been a challenge but good tools are making our lives much easier.
Dashboard and teams. This is well-organised interface.
Dashboard and teams. This is well-organised interface. could not see anything yet that I don't like What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? this data-driven ai makes thing simple, easy to manage
it is easy to use and share with my team could have
it is easy to use and share with my team could have more design pizzazz, but that's just extra What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? this is allowing our company to do final project retrospectives
Easy to use and support core needs for my team retrospective
it is easy to use and share with my team could have
it is easy to use and share with my team could have more design pizzazz, but that's just extra What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? this is allowing our company to do final project retrospectives
- Easy to use- Support is available and answers very
- Easy to use- Support is available and answers very quickly- A lot of free features is available, it is very appreciable !! like unlimited boards per team, free to customize boards, board exportation...- Analytics section- Action Items section- Possibility to hide & merge cards in board- Happyness index in board- Team(s) creation + Boards per team Suggestions for improvments:In Board & in Action Items section:- Not possible to put several owner on action items- Not possible to remove the due date if put by mistake- Missing something distinguish visually the status (new, in progress, done) like a color for instance- Missing a status "Cancelled" for action itemIn Analytics section:- Not possible to see who had voted on happyness index- Missing a date when the retrospective was started (not only when the board has been created)- Missing a column about action items : how many action items were created in the board + how many action items are at status Done What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? Before GoRetro :- With other retrospective tools, I didn't have unlimited boards- I had to write another document to summarize the retrospective and the action items to take for each retrospective of my teamBenefits :- GoRetro accelerates my work, especially with action items. It is easier to follow their progression.
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