Learn retrospective format vocabulary: Start-Stop-Continue, 4Ls, Mad-Sad-Glad, Timeline retrospective, safety check, and the prime directive for productive team retrospectives.
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A Scrum Master opens a retrospective by reading: 'Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.' What is this statement called?
The Retrospective Prime Directive (from Norm Kerth's 'Project Retrospectives', 2001) sets a blame-free psychological foundation for the retro. By acknowledging that everyone acted with good intent given the information they had, it discourages blame and encourages systemic thinking. Reading it aloud at the start helps teams shift from 'who failed' to 'what can we improve.'
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Before starting a retrospective, a Scrum Master asks each team member to rate from 1–5 how safe they feel sharing honest feedback. A majority answer '2' (low safety). What should the facilitator do?
The safety check (from Esther Derby and Diana Larsen's 'Agile Retrospectives') measures psychological safety before the retro begins. A score of 1–2 indicates people do not feel safe being honest. The facilitator should acknowledge this openly (without blame) and adapt: use anonymous voting tools (like Mentimeter), use written sticky notes instead of verbal sharing, or facilitate a separate conversation about psychological safety barriers before diving into improvement topics.
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A retrospective uses four categories for team feedback: what the team Liked, what they Learned, what they Lacked, and what they Longed for. What is this format called?
The 4Ls retrospective (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for) was created by Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener. It is especially useful after project completion or major releases. 'Longed for' captures wishes and aspirations the team couldn't express in the other three categories. It tends to generate richer learning insights than Start-Stop-Continue because it separates what existed but was missing (Lacked) from what didn't exist at all (Longed for).
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A team builds a shared visual timeline of the sprint on a whiteboard — marking deployments, incidents, key decisions, and team events in chronological order — then discusses patterns and emotional responses. What retrospective format is this?
The Timeline retrospective (also called a Sprint Timeline or Event Timeline retro) has team members plot significant events on a shared timeline and annotate them with emotions (often using emoji or colour codes). It helps surface cause-effect relationships across the sprint and reveals patterns invisible when looking at individual items. It is particularly effective after turbulent sprints with many incidents or context switches.
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In the 'Mad-Sad-Glad' retrospective format, a team member places a sticky note under 'Mad' about a deployment process issue. What do the three columns represent?
Mad-Sad-Glad is an emotion-based retrospective format that surfaces how team members felt during the sprint, not just what happened. Mad = frustrations, blockers, things that angered the team. Sad = missed opportunities, losses, disappointments. Glad = wins, things that worked well, moments of pride. By starting with emotions rather than facts, this format often unlocks more honest and candid discussion than purely analytical formats.