Retrospective template
Mad / Sad / Glad retrospective template
Mad / Sad / Glad is an emotion-first retrospective format: instead of asking what happened, it asks how the sprint felt — what made people angry, what disappointed them, and what genuinely pleased them. It surfaces the morale data that process-shaped formats flatten.
When to use it
Reach for it after a rough cycle — a slipped release, an incident, a reorganization — or when you sense frustration that isn't making it into standups. It gives feelings a legitimate container so they inform the process discussion instead of leaking around it.
Prompts
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Mad: what made you genuinely frustrated this sprint?
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Sad: what disappointed you or fell short of what you hoped?
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Glad: what made this sprint better than it could have been?
Facilitation
Set the tone explicitly: emotions are data about the system, not accusations about people. Let people speak to their own cards only. The facilitator's job is the translation step — each strongly-felt theme gets asked "what would need to change for this to feel different next sprint?" That question converts emotion into an actionable card.
Where it goes wrong
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The retro stops at venting — feelings get aired, nothing gets decided.
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Cards name colleagues instead of conditions, and safety evaporates.
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Glad gets skipped for time, so the retro reads as a complaint session and people disengage.
From format to follow-through
SmartRetro moves emotion into signal and action: the translation step becomes concrete because the retro starts with evidence of what actually happened, and every "what would change this" answer becomes an owned action item the next retro checks.