A step-by-step guide to operating Votenir — your sprint retrospective and estimation workspace for agile teams.
Illustrated walkthrough · Both flowsVotenir has two tools in one workspace. Sprint Retrospectives walk your team through a facilitated reflection in four phases, and Planning & Story Estimation runs live estimation around a shared table. You operate both as the Scrum Master. This guide covers each from start to finish.
Open votenir.com and create your account. Votenir uses single sign-on, so there's no password to set.
On the landing page, hit Get Started (or Sign In to Account if you already have one). A secure sign-up dialog appears — pick GitHub, Google, or Microsoft and authenticate. You'll land in your workspace.
After signing in you land on the Retrospective tab. A pair of tabs at the top — Retrospective and Estimation — switch between your two homes: your retro boards and your saved estimation rooms.
Use the Retrospective / Estimation tabs to switch views. On Retrospective, existing boards appear as cards showing their current phase and card counts. The two buttons top-right are where everything begins: + New Board for a retro, New Estimation for an estimation session.
Click + New Board. Give it a name (e.g. “Sprint 25 Retro”) and create. Every board starts with five ready-made columns — Good, Bad, Things to Start, Things to Stop, and Action — so you can dive straight in.
The board opens in the Creating phase. Everyone adds cards to the columns at the same time, but cards stay hidden from others until you reveal them — so no one anchors on the first idea.
Click + Add Card in any column, type your thought, and press Enter. Invite the team by email up top, and have everyone tap the Sprint Mood poll. Can't run the session yourself? Use Delegate in the toolbar to hand acting Scrum-Master rights to any member — they can drive the phases until you revoke it. When ideas slow down, hit Reveal All Cards and advance to Grouping.
Once cards are revealed, the Scrum Master moves to Grouping. Adding is now closed — drag a card on top of another within a column to stack them into a group, then name each group. When the themes are clear, press Start Voting →.
In Voting, each person spends votes on the groups they care about most. A live counter (Done Voting 0/1) tracks who's finished; likes stay open as a lightweight “me too” signal. When everyone's done, advance to Discussing.
The final Discussing phase orders groups by votes so you tackle the biggest themes first. Capture concrete action items in the Action column, assign an owner to each, and tick them off as they're done.
Switch flows: open the Estimation tab — or click New Estimation from the Retrospective tab — to open a live estimation table. The Estimation tab also lists every room you've created so you can reopen or remove one.
👉 Want the full picture — every deck, control, layout and edge case? Read the complete estimation guide.
Choose a card deck — Fibonacci, T-Shirt sizes, or Sequential (1–10) — then Create & Open. Guests can join with a share link or by scanning the room's QR code; no signup required for them.
Once created, the room is saved to your Estimation tab. Each card shows the deck it uses and how many stories you've estimated in it — click to jump back in, or use the trash icon to delete it.
Players sit around the oval table. First, click the story title at the top (it starts as “Untitled estimate”) and name what you're estimating — each saved round keeps its title. Each person picks a card from the deck (their choice stays hidden). Invite others with Share: it offers a copy-able link and a scannable QR code you can flash on the meeting screen — guests join with no signup, and the owner can hide the QR from everyone again in one click. As owner, press Reveal Cards — every seat flips together (with a little celebration), and the table shows the average. Revealing a story saves it automatically. Revealed by accident? Press Hide Cards to undo — the cards flip back, that save is removed, and everyone can keep voting with their picks intact; revealing again re-saves with the latest votes. Use Reset Board for the next story. Every saved story is listed in the collapsible Saved estimations panel by the Share button, where the owner can delete any entry.