The mad, sad, glad retrospective
Mad, sad, glad is a retrospective with three columns that ask how the work felt rather than what to do about it. Mad holds what made people angry. Sad holds what disappointed them. Glad holds what pleased them. It works because a team names a feeling long before it can name a root cause, and the feeling points at the cause.
The three columns
The board opens with Mad, Sad, and Glad already in place. The three examples come from the same sprint, so you can see how one bad fortnight splits across the columns. None of them names a person.
Mad
What made you angry? Usually something that repeats, that nobody owns, and that everyone has stopped reporting.
The build broke for two days and nobody owned the fix.
Sad
What disappointed you? Something you wanted and lost, or something that quietly slipped for the third time.
We cut the accessibility work again, for the third sprint running.
Glad
What pleased you? Include help from outside the team, which teams almost never write down.
Two people outside the team reviewed our design doc within a day.
Keeping it a retro, not a complaint session
This format asks people to say they were angry, sometimes in front of the person who made the decision. Handled badly it produces either silence or a pile-on. Four things prevent both.
- One rule, said out loud first. A card names a situation, never a person. Repeat it when a card breaks it.
- Write before you read. The board keeps post bodies blurred during Reflect, so the first strong card does not set the tone for everyone else.
- No names on the board. A Looptro board shows the text of a card and not who wrote it, so a junior engineer and a staff engineer write the same size card.
- Do not run it every sprint. A team asked for a feeling every two weeks starts to perform one. Reach for it when something happened.
If the team is in a genuine conflict, this is the wrong room for it. Two people who need to talk to each other should talk to each other.
How to run a mad, sad, glad exercise
Six steps across the four phases of the board. Budget 45 to 60 minutes for a team of 3 to 12 people. The writing is fast and the discussion is where the time goes.
- Set the rule before you open the board. Say one sentence out loud: a card names a situation, never a person. Say it before the link goes out, not after the first card lands. This is the difference between the format working and the format hurting.
- Open the board and share the link. Click "Start a retro", pick Mad, Sad, Glad, and type a display name. Copy the share link and send it to the team. A guest opens the link, types a display name, and joins.
- Reflect: write in all three columns at once. Give the team 7 minutes and do not go column by column. A feeling arrives with its context, and three separate rounds make people sort their thoughts instead of reporting them. Post bodies stay blurred while everyone writes.
- Group: let the size of a group speak. Unblur the board and merge the cards that say the same thing. Here the size of a group is the finding: four people writing the same Mad card is a different fact from one person writing it.
- Vote: pick what to discuss. Set a limit of 3 votes per person in the retro settings and let everyone vote at once. The board shows the vote count on a card and never shows who voted, which matters more here than in any other format.
- Discuss: ask what happened, not who did it. Take the top three cards. Ask the team to describe the situation before anyone proposes a fix, then agree one action item with an owner and a date. Close on Glad, so the room does not end on the worst card.
Glad, sad, mad, and the fourth column
Glad, sad, mad
Many teams say it the other way round, and both orders name the same three columns. Mad, sad, glad ends on the good column, which lifts the room at the close. Glad, sad, mad opens on it, which some facilitators prefer for a team that walks in tense. Looptro shows Mad first and the board does not force a reading order, so read the columns in whichever order suits the room.
The Scared column
Some teams add a fourth column, Scared, for a worry about something that has not happened yet. It is a good prompt: fear about next quarter fits neither Mad nor Sad, and a team under pressure has more of it than anger.
The Looptro board ships three columns, and an anonymous retro cannot add a fourth. Put the worry in Sad and say in the card that it has not happened yet, or run a sailboat retro instead, where the Rocks column asks for exactly this and the other three columns still cover the same ground.
When to reach for mad, sad, glad
Use it after a sprint that hurt: an incident, a date that slipped, a reorganisation, or a stretch of overtime. Use it when the answers to a fast retro have gone short and polite and everyone knows something is unsaid. The columns give people permission to say it, which a Start column does not. Do not use it as a default: the format spends the team's goodwill and works because it is rare. Do not use it when the team needs a decision in 45 minutes, because this one produces understanding first and actions second.
The other three formats
- Start, Stop, Continue
- The fast default. Three columns that already read as decisions, for a routine sprint you want to close in 45 minutes.
- 4Ls (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for)
- A slower, four-way look back that keeps what the team learned. Use it at a milestone, a launch, or the end of a project.
- Sailboat (Wind, Anchors, Rocks, Island)
- A picture instead of a list. Use it when the team needs to talk about risk and about the goal, not only about the last two weeks.
All four run with no account. The no-login page states what an anonymous retro gives you and what it costs you.
Questions about the mad, sad, glad retrospective
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What is mad sad glad in retrospective?
- Mad, Sad, Glad is a retrospective with three columns that ask how the work felt. Mad holds what made people angry, usually a thing that repeats and that nobody owns. Sad holds what disappointed people, usually a thing they wanted and lost. Glad holds what pleased them. The format works because a team names a feeling faster than it names a root cause, and the feeling points at the cause.
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Is it mad sad glad or glad sad mad?
- Both orders name the same three columns, and teams use both. Mad, Sad, Glad is the common name and ends on the good column, which lifts the room at the close. Glad, Sad, Mad opens on the good column, which some facilitators prefer for a team that is tense before the retro starts. Looptro shows Mad first. Read the columns in whichever order you want, because the board does not force a reading order.
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How do you run a mad sad glad exercise?
- Set the rule first: a card names a situation, never a person. Give the team 7 minutes to write in all three columns at once. Group the duplicates, and let the size of a group show how widely a feeling is shared. Give each person 3 votes. Then discuss the top cards, ask what happened rather than who did it, and write one action item per card. Budget 45 to 60 minutes.
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What is a mad sad glad template?
- It is a board with three columns titled Mad, Sad, and Glad, one card per idea. Looptro opens that board from the picker with the columns already in place, so nobody sets it up. Posts hide their author by default, which matters more in this format than in any other, because the columns ask people to admit a feeling.
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What is the scared column in mad sad glad?
- Some teams add a fourth column, Scared, for a worry about something that has not happened yet. It is a useful prompt, because fear about the next quarter rarely fits in Mad or Sad. Looptro ships Mad, Sad, Glad with three columns. Put a worry in Sad and say it is a worry, or run a Sailboat retro instead, where the Rocks column asks for exactly that.
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When should I use mad sad glad?
- Use it after a sprint that hurt: an incident, a slipped date, a reorganisation, or a stretch of overtime. Use it when the team gives short and polite answers to Start, Stop, Continue and everyone knows something is unsaid. Do not use it every sprint. The format asks for feeling, and a team asked for feeling every two weeks starts to perform it.
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Do I need an account to run a mad sad glad retrospective?
- No. Click "Start a retro" on this page, pick Mad, Sad, Glad, type a display name, and share the link. Nobody signs in, so Looptro holds no email address for the people in the retro, and the board hides who wrote each card. Looptro deletes the retro 24 hours after you create it.
Start a mad, sad, glad retro
The board opens with Mad, Sad, and Glad in place, and it hides who wrote each card. Nobody signs in, so Looptro holds no email address for the people in the retro. Looptro deletes the board 24 hours after you create it.