Run a 4Ls Retrospective
Facilitates a 4Ls retrospective (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for) with emotional and practical dimensions. Built for teams that want deeper reflection than Start/Stop/Continue.
When to use this prompt
Use this when your team has gone through an emotionally intense sprint (hard launch, painful incident, difficult re-org) and needs more than a mechanical Start/Stop/Continue retro. You will need 60 minutes and a team willing to share emotional context alongside practical feedback. The 4Ls format explicitly invites what was missing (Lacked) and what people wished had happened (Longed for), which are categories that mechanical retros often suppress. Do not use this for a well-running team in a mature rhythm; the emotional register may feel heavy-handed when there is nothing particular to process.
The Prompt
You are a Scrum Master facilitating a 60-minute 4Ls retrospective. The 4 quadrants are Liked, Learned, Lacked, and Longed for. Combine emotional and practical reflection in a structured format. Sprint name: {{sprint_name}} Team size: {{team_size}} Context: {{context}} Recent intensity level: {{intensity}} Produce the retro script in this structure: 1. OPENING (5 min) - Welcome script acknowledging the emotional dimension. - Ground rules: blame-free, one voice at a time, stay with experience rather than theorizing. - Goal: identify what supported and what drained us, so we can repeat or address it. 2. QUADRANT BRAINSTORM (15 min) - 4 columns on the board: LIKED, LEARNED, LACKED, LONGED FOR. - Definitions for the team: LIKED: what felt good or worked well, emotionally or practically. LEARNED: new knowledge or skill the team gained. LACKED: what was missing that we needed. LONGED FOR: what we wished had happened or had been present. - Prompt: everyone writes silently, 3 minutes per quadrant. 3. SHARE AND THEME (20 min) - Each person reads their top note from each quadrant. - Facilitator groups themes without interpretation. - Give the facilitator 3 phrases: "Can you say more about that?", "Who else resonates with this?", "What did it feel like when that happened?" 4. REFLECT ON THEMES (10 min) - Pick the single theme that has the most resonance across the team. - Ask: what does this theme tell us about how we worked this sprint? 5. COMMIT AND CLOSE (10 min) - Capture 2 commitments: one practical (process change) and one relational (how we will treat each other). - Closing round: each person names one thing they will take forward from this retro. Facilitator cheat sheet: - When emotional content comes up, do not try to fix it. Acknowledge with "Thank you for naming that." - When the team avoids the Lacked quadrant, specifically ask: "What was missing that would have helped us?" - When the Longed for quadrant fills with unrealistic wishes, ask: "What is the underlying need here?"
Example Output
RETRO: Sprint 14 (Billing Team, 7 people, post-incident) OPENING (5 min): This sprint was hard. We had a P1 incident and a missed commitment. Today is about understanding what supported us and what drained us, so we can repeat what worked and address what did not. Blame-free. QUADRANT BRAINSTORM (15 min) LIKED: - "The incident response was calm and coordinated." - "The team stayed together through the weekend." LEARNED: - "Our on-call runbook was missing a step for timezone bugs." - "Pair debugging is faster than solo for auth issues." LACKED: - "We did not have enough sleep." - "I didn't know who to escalate to at 2am." LONGED FOR: - "I wished someone had said 'stop, we are all tired' earlier." - "I wanted more time to think before committing to the fix." SHARE AND THEME (20 min): The team surfaced a clear theme: "we kept going when we should have paused." REFLECT (10 min): What does this theme tell us? We don't have a circuit breaker for ourselves. We value ship speed over sustainable pace, and this sprint showed the cost. COMMIT AND CLOSE (10 min) - Practical commitment: Add a 'pause check' to our incident runbook at the 4-hour mark. - Relational commitment: We will say 'I'm tired' out loud and trust each other to hear it. - Closing: each person names one takeaway.
Recommended Tools
Taskade has a retro board that supports the 4L quadrant layout with collaborative stickies. Notion projects lets you host the retro as a document with emotional prompts inline. Monday works for teams that want retros tied to project health metrics. All three support the themes and commit sections in persistent form for later reference.
Frequently Asked Questions
When should I use this prompt?
Use it after an emotionally intense sprint: a difficult launch, a painful incident, a re-org, or a team member leaving. The 4Ls format gives space for emotional processing that mechanical retros avoid, and that space is necessary for the team to integrate the experience rather than just moving on. Do not use it for routine sprints where nothing emotionally significant happened; the format can feel performative when there is nothing to process, and the team will disengage. Rotate between 4Ls and Start/Stop/Continue based on the emotional texture of the sprint.
How do I handle it if people open up emotionally?
Acknowledge rather than fix. When someone names an emotional experience, the instinct is to problem-solve it away, but that signals their experience was not welcome. Say something like 'thank you for naming that' or 'I hear you' and pause. If the emotion is intense and the team seems stuck, offer a 60-second silence for people to reset. If one person dominates the emotional space, use the phrase 'let's make sure we hear from others who felt this.' The retro ends with practical commitments, so the emotional space is contained within the structure.