Rotate who runs the sprint retrospective, and tell them a few days ahead.
Updates as you type. Nothing is saved until you create the rotation.
After that it keeps going in the same order for a year.
Type one name per line, in the order you want them to take turns. Emails are optional.
Facilitate the sprint retro, every two weeks, starting October 9. Change any of it before you create the rotation.
You get a year of turns and a link anyone can open. Sign in to claim it and turn on reminders.
Retros go stale when one person runs all of them. Not because that person is bad at it, but because a facilitator has a style, and after six sprints the team can predict the questions and has already decided what it is going to say. A different facilitator brings a different format, asks about something nobody thought to ask about, and notices things the regular host stopped seeing.
The bigger effect is on ownership. A retro run by the lead or the scrum master every time is something that happens to the team. A retro the team takes turns running is something the team does, and that tends to show up in how candid it gets.
Give the next facilitator a few days of notice. Two or three is about right: long enough to pick a format and skim the actions from last time, short enough that it does not get forgotten. Somebody who finds out at the start of the meeting will run whatever happened last sprint, which defeats the point of rotating at all. Reminders are what make this work in practice, and Team Toolkit lets you set how far ahead they go out.
Make it easy on people by keeping a short list of formats somewhere the team can reach: start-stop-continue, mad-sad-glad, a timeline of the sprint, lean coffee. Four or five is plenty. A first-time facilitator with a list to choose from will do fine; one staring at a blank board will quietly ask you to run it instead.
A facilitator who finds out at the start of the meeting will run the same retro as last time. A few days of notice is what changes that.
Claim the rotation with a Google sign-in and RotaHog emails whoever is up before their turn, for free. Everything below is on Team Toolkit, $19 a year for the whole team:
The reminder posts in your channel with Mark as done and Find a substitute buttons, so the person on duty can answer without leaving Slack.
Turns get marked done, missed or overdue, so the schedule shows what actually happened and not just what was planned. You can set how early and how late a turn may be completed.
Hand a single turn to someone else, name a backup ahead of time, or cancel a turn entirely when there is a holiday or an offsite. The rest of the order stays as it was.
When somebody joins or leaves, redeal every future turn around the new list in one click instead of rebuilding the schedule by hand.
Also included: replying to the reminder email to mark your turn done, the REST API, and the MCP server for asking an AI assistant whose turn it is. Calendar sync, analytics and team branding are not built yet, and neither is skipping public holidays automatically.
See what's in each planTwo reasons. The team stops hearing the same voice ask the same three questions, because each facilitator brings a different format and notices different things. And the retro becomes something the team owns rather than something the lead or scrum master does to it, which tends to show up in how honest it gets.
Two or three days is usually enough to pick a format and skim the last set of actions, without being so early that it gets forgotten. Team Toolkit lets you set reminders to go out up to two days before the turn; the free default for a bi-weekly rotation is one day before.
Yes. Bi-weekly is pre-selected here, so turns land every fourteen days from the start date you pick. Set the start date to your next retro and the rest of the year lines up with your sprint boundaries.
Yes, on Team Toolkit at $19 a year. The reminder posts to a Slack incoming webhook with Mark as done and Find a substitute buttons. Email reminders are free once you sign in and claim the rotation.
Creating the rotation and sharing it is free with no account. A free account adds email reminders and covers two rotations of up to five people. Slack, custom reminder timing, substitutes and skipping a retro are on Team Toolkit at $19 a year.