Mad Sad Glad Retrospective
Conduct a retrospective on understanding the emotions and feelings of the team.
Trusted by 65M+ users and leading companies
About the Mad Sad Glad Retrospective
What is Mad Sad Glad?
After a Sprint, it can be helpful for the team to pause and take stock of how they feel. This is crucial for maintaining morale and getting the most out of each Sprint. But sometimes, it can be hard to gauge your team’s feelings with open-ended questions like “How are you feeling?” That’s why many teams choose to employ the Mad Sad Glad retrospective.
Mad Sad Glad is a popular technique for examining your team member's emotions and encouraging them to think about how they feel. You can use the retrospective to highlight the positive feelings your team might have after a Sprint, but also to underline concerns or questions they might have going forward.
When should you run a Mad Sad Glad retrospective?
This type of retrospective can be especially valuable when there is a negative team dynamic, or if there is tension but team members haven't spoken about it yet. Participants can find it useful to use a structured framework to talk about their emotions – particularly in a fast-paced, results-focused agile environment.
How to use the Mad Sad Glad template
Miro’s virtual collaboration platform is perfect for running a Mad Sad Glad retrospective with your team. Simply select the template and invite your team to join.
The facilitator should give everyone 30-60 minutes to think about how they felt about the previous sprint. Then, allow the respondents some time to take stock of their feelings and write down the highlights on the Mad Sad Glad template. Were there parts of the Sprint that left them angry? Upset? Or satisfied? When the team is finished writing, bring everyone together to discuss. The facilitator can ask follow-up questions and take notes throughout the process.
4 tips for running a Mad Sad Glad retrospective
1. Give people space and time to reflect
Make sure the team has about 30 to 60 minutes of uninterrupted time to take stock of how they feel. Encourage people to take copious notes. Make sure the room is quiet and out of the way.
2. Make sure phones are turned off
Ask all attendees to turn off their phones so they can focus on the retrospective. If people are distracted by their phones, then they will find it harder to reflect.
3. Be inclusive
Assure everyone that there are no right or wrong answers. Remember, the goal of Mad Sad Glad is to take stock of how everyone is feeling, not to brainstorm processes or strategies.
4. Keep the focus on emotions
Encourage your team to focus on emotion, not action. People who might feel uncomfortable sharing their feelings sometimes instead try to pivot to strategy. Gently encourage them to avoid that.
3 reasons to use a Mad Sad Glad retrospective?
The Mad Sad Glad Retrospective is specifically focused on the team's emotional journey, and this is a unique approach with different benefits from a normal agile retrospective.
1. Build trust
By giving team members a space to discuss their feelings and emotions about the work they’ve done, you encourage honesty and forthrightness. Creating more honest, open, and positive teams ultimately help team members trust each other.
2. Improve morale
Almost everyone will struggle with certain things or get frustrated, and oftentimes workplaces don’t provide an avenue to talk about these frustrations. Giving employees an opportunity to talk through their difficulties will help them feel more welcomed, and ultimately boost morale.
3. Increase engagement
If team members are frustrated and don’t feel heard, they tend to check out. With a Mad Sad Glad retrospective, those team members can speak up and work towards solving their problems and building a more inclusive workspace where people can stay engaged.
Get started with this template right now.
Work Plan Template
Works best for:
Mapping, Project Planning
A work plan is essentially a roadmap for a project. It articulates the steps you must take to achieve the desired goal, sets demonstrable objectives, and establishes measurable deliverables. An effective work plan guides you throughout the project lifecycle, allowing you to realize an outcome by collaborating with your team. Although work plans vary, they generally contain four core components: goals, strategy, tactics, and deliverables.
Sailboat Template
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Meetings, Retrospectives
The Sailboat Retrospective is a low-pressure way for teams to reflect on how they handled a project. By defining your risks (the rocks), delaying issues (anchors), helping teams (wind), and the goal (land), you’ll be able to work out what you’re doing well and what you need to improve on for the next sprint. Approaching team dynamics with a sailboat metaphor helps everyone describe where they want to go together by figuring out what slows them down and what helps them reach their future goals.
OKR Planning Template
Works best for:
Strategic Planning, Meetings, Workshops
The OKR Planning template helps you turn exhaustive OKR sessions into dynamic and productive meetings. Use this template to make OKR planning more interactive, guiding your team through the session with creative Ice Breakers and Brainstorms, so you can co-create your OKRs and define the key results and action plans to achieve them.
Project Kickoff Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Documentation, Meetings
This Project Kickoff Meeting Template helps you have all the information about your project in one shared space, like a project manifesto. This template has seven activities to define your project’s goals and objectives, the team’s roles and responsibilities, and the next steps and resource materials for further consultation. Use the Project Kickoff Meeting Template to manage projects effectively and keep everyone aligned.
Lean Change Self-Starter Kit
Works best for:
Agile
The Lean Change Self-Starter Kit is a comprehensive resource for initiating organizational change using Lean principles. It provides tools and templates for assessing readiness, defining change objectives, and planning interventions. This template empowers change agents to navigate complexity, engage stakeholders, and drive meaningful transformation. By promoting adaptability and experimentation, the Lean Change Self-Starter Kit enables organizations to embrace change as a competitive advantage and achieve sustainable growth.
Alignment Chart Template
Works best for:
Desk Research, Brainstorming, Team Meetings
The alignment chart originated in the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game to allow players to categorize their characters according to their ethical and moral perspectives. Since then, people around the world have begun to use the alignment chart as a fun way to describe their own characteristics and personas, as well as fictional characters, famous people, and much more. In the conventional set-up, you figure out your placement in the alignment chart based on your views on law, chaoss, good, and evil. But you can adapt the alignment chart to reflect any characteristics you wish to use to create personas.