Mad Sad Glad retrospective

Ask how the sprint felt, not only what happened. Frustration, disappointment and satisfaction point straight at what your team cares about, and Mad Sad Glad gives each of them a column.

Mad

List the things that are driving you crazy. What is stopping you from performing at your best?

Sad

What are some of the things that have disappointed you or that you wished could be improved?

Glad

What makes you happy when you think about this project? What are the elements that you enjoy the most?

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What a Mad Sad Glad retrospective is

Mad Sad Glad asks everyone to sort their experience of the last sprint by feeling. Mad is for what drives you up the wall and keeps you from doing your best work. Sad is for disappointments and things you wish had gone better. Glad is for what you enjoyed. It is one of the data-gathering activities in Esther Derby and Diana Larsen's book Agile Retrospectives, and it has stayed popular because it asks a question most formats avoid.

Process-focused retros ask about events and practices. Feelings come out anyway — in the tone of a card, in a long pause, in the conversation after the meeting. Mad Sad Glad puts them on the board on purpose and treats them as information. A Mad card about the deploy process tells you more than "the deploy process could be improved": it tells you the cost is personal, and that people will not put up with it for long.

Why it works:

• Feelings show priority. People get mad about what blocks them again and again, and sad about things they cared about. Sorting by emotion gives you a rough ranking before anyone votes.
• It reaches problems that aren't "process". Being left out of a decision, a launch that was canceled, work nobody noticed — these rarely surface when the question is "what should we change?".
• It shows where the team disagrees. When the same topic sits under Mad for some people and Glad for others — a new pairing rule, a stricter definition of done — you have found a conversation worth having.
• Glad gets equal space. The good parts have their own column, which keeps the session from turning into a list of grievances.

When to use it, and when not to

Mad Sad Glad is the right choice when:

• the sprint was hard — a crunch, an outage, a reorganization — and people need to say how it felt before they can think about fixes;
• morale seems off and nobody can say why; the cards often name the cause;
• your usual retro produces polite, safe cards and you suspect the real topics are elsewhere;
• a long project is ending and you want to know how the team experienced it, not only what it delivered;
• a team is forming and you want to learn what each person cares about.

Pick something else when:

• The tension is between two people. A group retro is the wrong place to work out a personal conflict. Talk to each of them first, and bring only the team-level part to the retro.
• Everyone knows the problem but nobody says it. If the topic already has a name the team keeps avoiding, go straight to it with the Elephant in the Room template.
• The group is mixed or new to retros. "Mad" can feel too strong in front of a client or senior stakeholders. Rose, Thorn, Bud covers similar ground with gentler words.
• You need a plan more than a temperature check. When the team is calm and simply wants to adjust how it works, Start Stop Continue gets to actions faster.

The three columns

In ProstoRetro the board opens with Mad, Sad and Glad, in that order. Cards are anonymous unless the author chooses otherwise, which matters more in this format than in most.

Mad: what is driving you crazy

Frustrations, blockers and time-wasters: anything that stops you performing at your best. Mad cards are usually about something still happening that you want gone. The test that tells it from Sad: does it make you want to push back? If you would fix it tomorrow given the chance, it is Mad.

• Third sprint in a row where scope was added after planning
• Staging gets reset without warning and wipes our test accounts
• I answer the same three questions from sales every day
• Pull requests wait three days for review, then bounce on formatting

Sad: what disappointed you

Missed hopes, losses and things that could have gone better but are mostly behind you. Sad cards are quieter: a feature that shipped half-finished, a colleague who left, a launch nobody celebrated. The test: is it something you hoped for that didn't happen? Then it is Sad, even if it also annoys you.

Don't rush this column. Sad cards often hold the problems a team has stopped expecting anyone to fix, and those deserve a second look.

• We cut the onboarding redesign to make the date, and it was the part I was proudest of
• Nobody outside the team noticed the performance work
• Maria moved to another team and we never had a proper handover
• The beta users we interviewed never heard back from us

Glad: what you enjoyed

What made you happy about the work, the team or the product. Glad cards aren't only about results: a good conversation, a fair decision or a clear spec counts. The test: would you be sorry to lose it?

• The new on-call handbook made my first night on call boring, in a good way
• Design and engineering sketched the settings page together and it shipped with no rework
• A customer quoted our release notes back to us
• Stand-up finishes in ten minutes now

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A 45-minute Mad Sad Glad agenda

Sized for five to nine people. After a particularly hard sprint, plan an hour and give the extra time to discussion.

1. Warm-up, 4 minutes. Something light, so people arrive as themselves rather than as their job titles. Pick a question from our icebreaker questions. A playful one works better than a deep personal one right before a retro about feelings.
2. Ground rules, 2 minutes. Feelings are not up for debate; situations are. Cards describe situations, not people. Nothing on the board will be used against anyone.
3. Silent writing, 8 minutes. Everyone writes cards in all three columns. Ask for at least one Glad card each.
4. Read and group, 7 minutes. Read the cards aloud without commenting on them, then cluster cards about the same situation, even when they sit in different columns.
5. Vote, 3 minutes. Vote for the topics you most want to change or to protect.
6. Discuss, 15 minutes. Work through the three most-voted topics, asking in order: what happened? What does the feeling tell us? What would make it better? For a Glad topic, ask how to make sure it happens again.
7. Actions, 4 minutes. Each discussed topic ends with one action, an owner and a date, or an explicit decision to live with it for now.
8. Close, 2 minutes. One word each: how do you feel leaving this retro?

Running it with a remote team

• Say that cards are anonymous. On a call people can't read the room, and many won't write "mad" next to their name. Anonymity is on by default in ProstoRetro; mention it at the start so nobody has to wonder.
• Keep cards hidden until everyone has written. Moods are contagious. If the first visible card is angry, the board turns angry. Nobody sees other people's cards until grouping starts, so each person describes their own sprint.
• Add a pulse survey. The pulse is a short anonymous survey that runs before the writing; its results are revealed during discussion, and the team page keeps the history. Two or three retros later you can see whether your actions changed how people feel, not just what they do.
• Allow a GIF. Cards can carry images and GIFs. A reaction GIF on a Mad card lightens the moment without hiding the point, and for some people it is an easier way to admit how annoyed they are.
• Run a poll when the call goes quiet. If a sensitive topic stalls, an anonymous one-question poll — "Should we raise this with leadership? Yes / Not yet / No" — gets an honest answer in a minute.
• Give each topic a timer. Emotional topics expand to fill the time available. When the timer ends, ask whether the team wants five more minutes or an action.

Variations

Glad first

When the team is tired, read the Glad cards out first and open the discussion with the top Glad topic before moving to Mad and Sad. Starting from what worked gives people the energy to face the hard topics, and it reminds everyone that the sprint was not all bad.

Feelings on a timeline

For a long project or an eventful sprint, ask everyone to start each card with the week or the event it refers to: "Release week: …", "After the migration: …". Read the board in time order and you see how the mood moved — close to the emotional timeline many facilitators draw on a whiteboard, without needing one.

Add a Thanks column

Glad covers what you enjoyed, but it doesn't always name who helped. A fourth column for thanks to specific people keeps appreciation from getting lost among process cards. Build it as a custom template in ProstoRetro: Mad, Sad, Glad and Thanks, with your own descriptions and colors.

Common mistakes

• Arguing with the feeling. "You shouldn't be mad about that, we all agreed the deadline" ends honesty for the rest of the session. Accept the feeling, then discuss the situation behind it.
• Venting without actions. Ending with a full Mad column and no decisions sends people away feeling worse than when they arrived. Every discussed topic gets an action or a conscious decision not to act.
• Names on cards. "Mad that Tom keeps…" makes the retro about Tom. Ask authors to describe the situation instead, and rewrite such cards before discussion.
• Treating Sad as a milder Mad. Disappointment needs a different response from frustration: often acknowledgment, a conversation with someone outside the team or a reset of expectations, rather than a process fix.
• Racing through Glad. Two minutes on the good parts tells people they don't count. Give at least one discussion slot to a Glad topic.
• The most senior person reacting first. If the manager comments on every card, the cards get safer. Ask them to listen while cards are read and to speak last in discussion.

FAQ

What is the difference between Mad and Sad?

Mad is frustration with something that is still in your way; Sad is disappointment about something that didn't turn out as you hoped. Mad usually calls for a fix, Sad for acknowledgment or different expectations next time.

How long does a Mad Sad Glad retrospective take?

Usually 45 minutes for a team of five to nine. After a hard sprint, plan an hour: emotional topics take longer, and cutting them short does more harm than not raising them.

Should the manager attend a Mad Sad Glad retro?

If the team speaks freely in front of them, yes. If not, run it without them and share the actions afterwards. Anonymous cards and votes help, but they don't fix a room where people feel watched.

What is the difference between Mad Sad Glad and Start Stop Continue?

Mad Sad Glad asks how the sprint felt; Start Stop Continue asks what to change. Use the first to understand the mood and find hidden problems, the second when the problems are known and you want actions. Many teams alternate.

Can I run a Mad Sad Glad retrospective online for free?

Yes. Mad Sad Glad is among ProstoRetro's built-in templates, and the app is free. Cards are anonymous by default and so are votes, which matters more for this format than for most. For a tour of a full session, see how to conduct a great retro, or browse other retrospective templates.