An incredible tool to facilitate retrospectives and more (works in person AND remotely)
What do you like best?
Simple with just enough complexity but not more. Parabol makes retrospectives and other types of brainstorm-cluster-discuss types of meetings really smooth. With every member working on their own computer, this tool makes it easy to get a lot done fast, even more effectively than on a board with sticky notes. I have used this tool in both in-person and remote (with the whole team on zoom or on the phone) and it works great.
What do you dislike?
By default Parabol sends a summary email for every meeting to all team members regardless of whether they joined the meeting or not. I would rather have an option to include those who were not present in the email rather than having it be the default setting.
You can create your own templates for meetings, but I haven't see yet the option to transfer these templates to other teams or other organizations, that would be handy for me.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
If you are looking for an effective way to have your team gather lots of insights, sort it out and have a productive conversation, this is your tool. Even a novice facilitator can run a great meeting using Parabol.
What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?
I use Parabol for my monthly retrospectives with my team. I also use it as an ad-hoc solution to have a fast converge-diverge type of meeting (collecting lots of input, sorting it and then discussing each clusters). As a professional facilitator, I find it to be simple to use and simple to onboard new members.
