Free online whiteboard for team brainstorming
An open canvas with shapes, sticky notes, arrows and free text, where the whole team edits at the same time. Use it for the sessions that don't fit into columns: mapping, sketching, prioritising.
Start a whiteboard
Free. No account needed. Share the link and teammates can join and draw with you.
An impact and effort matrix, drawn live on the whiteboard.
What teams do on a whiteboard
Brainstorm, then cluster
Everyone adds sticky notes for five minutes without talking. Then group them by theme and name each group. This is affinity mapping.
Impact and effort matrix
Draw two axes. Place each idea where the team agrees it sits. Work from the top left: high impact, low effort.
User story map
Lay the user's journey across the top and stack the stories underneath, most important first. Cut a release line across it.
System or flow sketch
Boxes and arrows for a service, a process or a handoff. The argument about where a line goes is the useful part.
Working agreement
Sticky notes for how the team wants to work together. Dot-vote the ones to keep, and pin the result somewhere visible.
A retro that doesn't fit columns
A timeline of the sprint, with highs and lows plotted along it, shows where the energy went.
Making a whiteboard session work
- Give people a task, not a blank canvas. "Add the three biggest risks" works, and "brainstorm" doesn't.
- Silent first. Writing for a few minutes before anyone talks brings out ideas the loudest person would have drowned.
- Name an owner for the result. Boards that nobody owns get abandoned.
- Take a screenshot or link the board from the ticket or the doc. A great board that nobody can find helps nobody.
- Keep it to one question per board. Reuse is the enemy of clarity.
Whiteboard or retro board?
A retro board is built for a repeating flow: cards in columns, then votes, then actions with owners. A whiteboard is for free-form work where position and connection carry meaning. If your session is a list of things, use a retro board. If it's a picture, use a whiteboard.
Questions
- Do people need an account to join?
- No. Share the link and teammates can join without one.
- Can several people edit at once?
- Yes. Everyone draws and edits in real time, the same as the rest of the app.
- What can I put on the canvas?
- Shapes, sticky notes, arrows and free text on an open canvas.
- Can I keep the board afterwards?
- Yes. You can save it to a free account so it's there next time.
Open a blank canvas
A whiteboard opens in a few seconds. Share the link and start putting things on it.
Start a whiteboard