It’s an engaging structure, encouraging team members to share their thoughts in a creative environment. If you’re looking for a fun, visual way to reflect on your work, the sailboat retrospective is ideal. The team can then discuss how to improve on these areas of weakness in future sprints. For example, communication silos or any areas of weakness in the team’s processes. Anchor: The anchor outlines any areas that held the team back by either slowing down or hindering progress.Common examples include bottlenecks, unclear requirements, or a lack of resources. These could be obstacles, challenges, or negative aspects that affected the success of the sprint. Rocks: The rocks represent risks that you faced during the sprint.These can include positive aspects, successes, or other factors that contributed to the project's progress-for example, effective teamwork, good communication, supportive stakeholders, or well-defined goals. Wind: When looking at the wind, the team reviews activities or processes that moved the boat toward the destination.It usually takes the form of an island the boat is trying to reach. In other words, it’s a visual representation of what the outcome should be. Goal: The goal represents the desired destination for the project.Let’s outline these areas in more detail. Recognizing these successes is a great way to boost team morale and reflect on what the team can do in future sprints. This could be achievements, milestones reached, effective collaboration, or other positive experiences worth mentioning. Glad: In this category, team members outline the positive aspects of the sprint, such as things that made them happy, proud, or satisfied.It gives them a space to share their experiences, identify pain points, and find ways to prevent challenges from happening in future sprints. Sad: This category focuses on team members' negative emotions or sadness during their work.By venting their frustrations, they can identify and address areas of improvement. Mad: Team members express any disappointment, anger, or concern they experienced throughout the sprint.Mad, sad, gladĪs the name suggests, the mad, sad, glad retrospective focuses on three key emotional categories: The simple format encourages team members to review what went well, what they lacked, and what to improve going forward. The 4 L’s retrospective is useful for teams that want a simple structure to reflect on the positives and negatives of their sprint. It encourages forward-thinking and can inspire new ideas. The team discusses what they wished they'd had during the last sprint and how they'd like to see it in future projects or iterations. Longed for: This category allows team members to express their aspirations for future sprints.This category helps the team pinpoint areas of improvement and potential solutions. This involves identifying areas of weakness, bottlenecks, challenges, or insufficient resources. Lacked: Team members discuss what was lacking in the sprint.This helps the team identify areas of growth and development.
For example, any lessons learned, new skills, or new knowledge obtained. Learned: In this category, team members reflect on what they learned.This could include successful outcomes, effective teamwork, or personal achievements. Liked: Team members share what they liked or appreciated about the sprint.Here's a breakdown of each element in the 4 L’s retrospective: You can make notes, ask questions, and review the success and problems of previous projects. Plus, if you use an online tool like Motion to organize and manage your retrospective meetings, everyone can collaborate using the software. Improve collaboration: Retrospectives create an inclusive environment where everyone has a chance to voice their thoughts, concerns, and ideas.Take a look at some of the key benefits of hosting a retrospective meeting with your project team. What are the benefits of using a retrospective? For example, you might improve your processes, change your team dynamics, or adjust tasks and activities.įind out more about retrospectives in this article: different types of Scrum meetings. What obstacles did we encounter, and how did we overcome them?Īt the end of the retrospective, you'll have actionable items to implement in the next sprint or iteration.It’s a core part of the Scrum process, giving the entire project team a chance to reflect on what went well and what to improve in the future.ĭuring the meeting, project team members typically aim to answer the following questions: In the Agile methodology, a retrospective is a meeting that takes place at the end of the sprint.