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Retool CoE Leader Overview

Your organization relies on internal tools to operate efficiently, yet teams often struggle with fragmented and siloed systems, slow development cycles, and governance gaps. Without a structured approach, these inefficiencies increase costs, slow execution, and create security risks. The Center of Excellence (CoE) provides a scalable framework to solve these challenges - establishing governance, accelerating team productivity, and ensuring long-term success. The Retool CoE Leader represents an individual who clearly owns the Retool investment and expansion within an organization. They partner with their internal business units to adopt or support the Retool implementation and bridge those resources with the Retool Technical Account Manager, Account Executive, and Professional Services. They also work with their CoE team and Retool to establish standardized governance practices/guardrails, provide internal support, education, and escalate critical features/issues.

Why Does This Matter for You?​

  1. Amplify your leadership impact: Leading this initiative positions you as a key driver of innovation, cost efficiency, and operational excellence across your organization.
  2. Solve high-impact challenges: Streamline internal operations, eliminate inefficiencies, and enable teams to execute faster with fewer resources.
  3. Increase revenue & reduce costs: Eliminate redundant software spend, automate manual work, and accelerate project timelines to maximize SaaS ROI.
  4. Strengthen governance & mitigate risks: Ensure security, compliance, and strategic oversight as internal tooling scales.

Role & Responsibilities​

Day 1: Generate awareness/ground truth​

The Retool CoE Leader is responsible for establishing a central communication and governance structure to ensure the successful implementation of Retool across various enterprise business units. To do this, this leader must be able to identify which business units have successfully implemented the solution and find new opportunities where this success can continue to be leveraged. Collecting this data for future marketing/communication to the broader organization is essential.

Actions:

  1. Meet with existing teams and perform interviews to gain ground truth on the Retool implementation, including the business challenge and technical implementation.
  2. Meet with teams in the intake funnel to perform the same interviews to compare and contrast with the implemented teams.
  3. Set up a dedicated Retool Slack/Teams channel or internal forum for knowledge sharing.
  4. Create a centralized tracking sheet listing all teams using Retool (status: POC/testing, pilot, production).
  5. Review the current CoE team to confirm both business and technical resources are available to support the broad adoption of Retool.
  6. Business resources should have general knowledge/experience of the business use cases that are being targeted.
  7. Technical resources need enterprise knowledge of IT strategic goals, IT systems, Architecture Review Board requirements, and any other governance challenges that could impact Retool adoption.

Results:

  1. Identification of teams / key stakeholders that are currently building within Retool.
  2. Identification of teams / key stakeholders that are supporting the deployment of Retool artifacts.
  3. Identification of any friction or pain points in the building or deployment process.
  4. Identify current governance, product, or knowledge issues in the Retool rollout.
  5. Retool Communication Hub - Slack/forum set up with active engagement

Supporting Material - https://docs.retool.com/center-of-excellence/phases/formation/

Day 30: Evaluate current Retool CoE​

The Retool CoE Leader is now aware of the Retool story within the organization. Creating a narrative that communicates the opportunities where success can be achieved at this time. On Day 30, it is essential to understand the current Retool CoE capabilities to support the incremental / broader adoption of Retool. The Retool CoE is responsible for onboarding teams into Retool, and this requires scaffolding:

Actions:

  1. Charter - Confirm clear communication exists on what the Retool CoE has been created for, why the enterprise is adopting Retool, and when this platform is ideally applied. For example, “Any internal tools that operationally support our customers should first leverage Retool versus custom, open-source frameworks to help accelerate product rollout.” This provides a clear message on the business case, simplifying when/where Retool fits.
  2. CoE Knowledge Management — Establish or evaluate the existing Retool CoE wiki, with best practices, top known use cases, FAQ, and communication channels (e.g., Slack, MS Teams, Email), etc., that are used to communicate with existing Retool teams, onboarding teams, and the organization about the Retool initiative.
  3. Change Management - identify whether change management / regular communications are performed with Retool.
    • An example of change management is educating traditional developers on how Retool represents a shift in how software is developed rapidly by removing the undifferentiated heavy lifting (releases/deployment, governance, etc.). Educating existing teams about these benefits, along with the rationale, will help speed up onboarding/adoption.
    • Creating regular async / sync touchpoints / newsletters with the organization to discuss rollout plans, team shipping events, and new features/capabilities keeps the organization informed and helps generate new Retool opportunities.
  4. Establish Key Performance Indicators for adoption, efficiency gains, and cost reduction or revenue increase.

Results:

  1. A Retool CoE charter has been published and shared with key stakeholders.
  2. Active documentation of best practices in a centralized wiki.
  3. A regular cadence of Retool updates is shared via messaging channels/email.
    • Weekly newsletter on Retool successes, new features, and enablement opportunities.
    • On-demand communication when specific issues arise that the CoE team is working to resolve.

Supporting material: https://docs.retool.com/center-of-excellence/phases/formation/

Day 60: Onboarding​

At this point, the CoE Leader can focus on the existing onboarding process that the Retool CoE employs. If nothing exists, establishing a process to interview and prioritize teams comes next. Review the following to understand better what common onboarding concerns are:

Actions:

  1. Develop a form intake mechanism for teams interested in leveraging Retool.
  2. Create an onboarding guide for accepted teams that identifies internal Retool resources, a team checklist, and an engagement process with CoE.
  3. Develop a style guide for Retool development, including tag naming, query naming, and JS/Python recommendations.
  4. Implement regularly scheduled onboarding sessions with Retool Technical Account Manager to quickly enable new builders and teams.
  5. Implement Agile-like standups with onboarding teams to quickly acquire information about their progress and blockers that the CoE team can assist with.
  6. Provide weekly office hours and a support messaging channel for teams to reach out to CoE when Retool issues arise or escalations are required.
  7. The Retool CoE team partners closely with Retool Technical Account Manager and Retool Support to handle issues that are beyond their ability or represent potential defects in the product.

Results:

  1. Teams onboarded with a structured process.
  2. Onboarding teams can deploy an MVP within one month of onboarding.
  3. Teams are self-sufficient and can develop a second solution without the direct involvement of CoE other than support issues.

Supporting material: https://docs.retool.com/center-of-excellence/phases/onboarding/

Day 90: Scaling​

The CoE Leader can work with the CoE Team to identify opportunities to review and automate onboarding processes. These processes should follow enterprise best practices and focus on enabling a new team to become productive quickly.

Actions:

  1. Implement automation within Retool to provision new workspaces (Retool Spaces) for teams to access a development environment quickly. This will speed up the onboarding process, allowing more time for development.
  2. Automation should include default folders / sub-folders for organizing work.
  3. Develop self-service enablement resources to understand the Retool implementation at the enterprise, including topics such as:
  4. Create a catalog of available data services/resources pre-configured in Retool so that builders can access the right resources during development.
  5. Improving support mechanisms to help builders/admins unblock issues more rapidly so they can maintain development momentum.
  6. Establish a Retool Builder Community within the enterprise. This could be represented in a monthly or quarterly event where teams present their solutions, journeys, and successes/failures to the enterprise. This often acts as a way to market Retool, leading to new engagements and tighter collaborations across teams.

Results:

  1. Teams are onboarded more quickly (minutes vs. days) compared to Day 30 metrics.
  2. Teams are following guidance on governance practices in their designated workspace.
  3. Teams are leveraging support and community to build stronger Retool relationships.

Supporting material: https://docs.retool.com/center-of-excellence/phases/scaling/

Day 90+: Improving​

In this phase, the CoE Leader is actively engaging with teams to collect data on opportunities for additional improvement and reduction in overall friction of Retool and the Retool CoE. This could include identifying new features and impactful defects and optimizing CoE processes. Close engagement and alignment with the Retool Team (Account Executive, Technical Account Manager, Sales Engineer(s), Professional Services) to engage with Retool Engineering and Support Services is a requirement.

Actions:

  1. Define a Retool CoE roadmap for the next 6-12 months.
  2. Identified at least 3 new business units/departments or teams where Retool adoption can be expanded.
  3. Hosted a cross-functional workshop with multiple team leaders to align on governance and adoption strategies.

Supporting material: https://docs.retool.com/center-of-excellence/phases/improving/