4Ls retrospective: Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed For

Four words that cover a sprint from every side: what people enjoyed, what they found out, what was missing and what they wished for. It is one of the few formats that gives learning a column of its own.

Liked

Things the team enjoyed or that went better than expected during the previous project cycle

Learned

Valuable lessons the team learned during the last sprint or project cycle

Lacked

What the team felt was missing or could have gone better during the last iteration

Longed For

What the team desired or wished for in terms of support during the last iteration

Use this template — it's free

What a 4Ls retrospective is

The 4Ls retrospective asks the team to sort the last sprint, release or project into four columns: Liked, Learned, Lacked and Longed For. Two look at what the team gained, two at the gaps — what was missing in the period you just finished and what the team wishes it had going forward. The technique is usually credited to Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener.

What makes it different is the Learned column. Most formats split a sprint into good and bad. But much of what a team takes away is neither: an index that cut a query from four seconds to forty milliseconds, the discovery that enterprise customers never open the dashboard, the realization that migration work is always underestimated. Those cards are not wins or problems. They are knowledge, and without a column of their own they get lost between the complaints.

Why teams come back to it:

• It holds both facts and feelings. Liked and Longed For are personal; Learned and Lacked are closer to observations. The board shows how the work went and how it felt.
• It separates looking back from looking ahead. Lacked is about what was missing in the last iteration. Longed For is what people want next, often support from outside the team.
• The tone is neutral. "Lacked" is gentler than "what went wrong", which helps with new teams, mixed groups and anyone who finds retros confrontational.
• It produces two kinds of output. Actions from Lacked and Longed For, and a short list of lessons from Learned worth writing down for whoever touches this work next.

When to use it, and when not to

The 4Ls are a good fit:

• at the end of a project, a release or a quarter, when lessons are worth as much as fixes;
• after the team tried something new — a framework, a first on-call rota, a discovery sprint, a spike;
• a month after new people joined, while they still see clearly what was missing;
• when retros have turned into a list of complaints and you want a format that also asks what the team gained;
• for cross-functional groups, since the four words need no explanation.

Pick something else when:

• The sprint was short and uneventful. Four columns are a lot for a quiet week, and Learned ends up empty. Start Stop Continue or KPT are lighter.
• Emotions are running high. The 4Ls touch feelings only lightly. After a painful sprint, Mad Sad Glad lets people say directly what they feel.
• You need decisions about what comes next. If one project is ending and the next is starting, FLAP adds a column for future considerations, so lessons turn into plans in the same session.

The four columns

The ProstoRetro board gives you four columns, in this order: Liked, Learned, Lacked and Longed For. The two pairs that get mixed up are Liked/Learned and Lacked/Longed For, so each section gives you a test for the border.

Liked: what went better than expected

What people enjoyed or found better than they expected. Any size counts: a decision, a tool, a meeting that ended early, a colleague's help on a bad day. The test that separates it from Learned: is the card about how something felt or worked, rather than something you now know? Liked is about experience; Learned is about knowledge.

• Having a designer in the team full-time instead of borrowing one
• The release went out at 10 a.m., not 11 p.m.
• Product said no to two late requests and explained why
• Agreeing on the API contract before building either side

Learned: what we know now that we didn't before

Lessons about the product, the users, the technology or how the team works. A good Learned card changes how you would do something next time. The test: if you could start this sprint again, would this card make you do anything differently? If not, it is probably a Liked card.

• Half of the "slow page" complaints came from one customer with 40,000 projects
• Migrations on big tables need a dry run on a copy of production data
• Users read the empty state more carefully than the onboarding tour
• Splitting stories by user role gave smaller tickets than splitting by screen

Lacked: what was missing

What the team needed in the last iteration and didn't have: information, time, skills, tools, decisions or people. The test that tells it from Longed For: did its absence actually hurt the work you just did? Lacked is a gap you can point to in the sprint.

• Clear acceptance criteria for the export feature — we built it twice
• A second person who can release the mobile app
• Test data that looks like real customer accounts
• Time for code review: everyone was heads-down until Thursday

Longed For: what we wish we'd had

What the team wanted or wished for, especially in terms of support — from management, from other teams, from the organization or from each other. These cards look forward and are often bigger than one sprint. The test: is this something you want, rather than a gap whose cost you can already see?

• A decision on the Q3 roadmap before we start estimating
• Someone from the data team at our refinement sessions
• One day a week without meetings
• Earlier access to the brand guidelines for the redesign

Use this template — it's free

A 60-minute 4Ls agenda

Built for a sprint retro with five to nine people. For a project review with more people, see the variations below.

1. Warm-up, 5 minutes. A question that sets up the Learned column, such as "what is something you figured out recently, at work or outside it?" Our list of work icebreaker questions has more.
2. Review open actions, 5 minutes. ProstoRetro opens the retro with action items that are still open. Close the finished ones; for the rest, agree whether they still matter.
3. Silent writing, 12 minutes. Everyone writes in all four columns. At the halfway mark, remind people about Learned; it fills last.
4. Read and group, 8 minutes. Read the cards aloud and merge duplicates, especially between Lacked and Longed For.
5. Collect the lessons, 5 minutes. Read the Learned column together before voting. Pick the two or three lessons worth writing down for others, and name who will write them up.
6. Vote, 4 minutes. Vote for the Lacked and Longed For topics you most want to act on, and the Liked topics you most want to protect.
7. Discuss, 15 minutes. Three topics, most votes first. For Lacked, ask "what would have prevented the gap?"; for Longed For, "who can give us this, and who will ask?"; for Liked, "how do we make sure it happens again?"
8. Action items, 4 minutes. One owner and one due date each. Requests to people outside the team count as actions too: "Ask the data lead for a person at refinement — Sam, by Friday."
9. Close, 2 minutes. Read back the actions and the lessons.

Running it with a remote team

• Collect cards as the project goes. At the end of a long project nobody remembers week two. An infinite room in ProstoRetro is a permanent link where people add cards whenever something happens; the cards stay hidden until the team meets and the facilitator starts the retro.
• Show the evidence. Learned cards are stronger with proof: a screenshot of the latency graph before and after the fix, a photo of the whiteboard sketch. Cards can carry images, pasted straight from the clipboard or added by link.
• Let the AI make the first pass at grouping. Four columns produce many overlapping cards. ProstoRetro offers to group similar cards for you and can name the groups; keep what makes sense and undo the rest.
• Set a meeting length. Writing in four columns tends to overrun on a call. Give the board a 60-minute meeting length when you create it, and the app splits the time across phases and discussion topics and runs the timers. An infinite room has no meeting length, so there the facilitator sets the timers.
• Keep the lessons. After the retro there is a summary page with the cards, the action items and a one-line AI recap, and signed-in participants get it by email. Every Learned card is there, ready for the lessons write-up.

Variations

3Ls: Liked, Learned, Lacked

For a short sprint or a 30-minute slot, drop Longed For and fold wishes into the discussion of Lacked. You keep the Learned column, which is the main reason to choose this format. In ProstoRetro this is a custom template: three columns, your own descriptions.

4Ls as a project review

Same columns, longer horizon: a whole release or quarter. Invite everyone who worked on it, including people who moved to other work halfway through and stakeholders who saw the result from outside. Give the Learned column twice the time and finish with one page of lessons for the next team.

4Ls after onboarding

Ask people who joined in the last couple of months to write their 4Ls about their first weeks, then read them with the team. Lacked shows what is missing from your onboarding; Longed For shows what support new people wanted and didn't feel able to ask for.

Common mistakes

• Learned turns into Liked. "Learned that pairing is great" is a Liked card. Ask the author what they would do differently next time, and rewrite the card around that.
• Personal and team lessons mixed together. "I finally understand our build pipeline" matters to one person; "the build cache breaks when two branches change the same lockfile" changes how the whole team works. Celebrate the first kind and write up the second.
• Longed For as a fantasy list. "Double the team" won't happen. Ask which part of the wish the team could actually get, and from whom.
• Losing the lessons. The Learned column is the reason to pick this format. If those cards vanish after the meeting, you have run a slower Start Stop Continue.
• Too many topics. Four columns can easily produce forty cards. Vote, discuss three topics, and accept that the rest will wait.

FAQ

What do the 4Ls stand for?

Liked, Learned, Lacked and Longed For: what felt good or went better than expected, what the team found out, what was missing, and what the team wishes it had.

What is the difference between Lacked and Longed For?

Lacked is a gap you felt in the last iteration — something missing that hurt the work. Longed For is a wish for the future, often support from outside the team. When both columns mention the same thing, merge the cards.

How long does a 4Ls retrospective take?

Plan an hour for a team of five to nine. For a project review with a long timeline, plan 75 to 90 minutes and collect the cards in advance.

Is the 4Ls retrospective better than Start Stop Continue?

They do different jobs. The 4Ls are better for reflection and lessons, especially at milestones; Start Stop Continue is faster and goes straight to actions. Many teams use Start Stop Continue for routine sprints and the 4Ls at the end of a release.

Can I run a 4Ls retrospective online for free?

Yes. The 4Ls come built into ProstoRetro at no cost. For a project review, open an infinite room early so people can add cards while the project is still running. The article on running a great retro walks through a full session, and the retrospective templates library has other formats.