Liked / Learned / Lacked / Longed for retrospective
The four Ls (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for) is the format to reach for when the period under review is longer than a sprint. Its two middle columns are what make it: Learned captures knowledge the team gained, and Lacked names what was missing, which is usually more actionable than what went wrong.
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The columns
Liked
What the team enjoyed or valued: practices, decisions, moments worth keeping.
Ask: What did you like about how this went?
Liked how early we got a working prototype in front of users
Learned
New knowledge, technical or otherwise. The column that turns experience into something the team owns.
Ask: What do you know now that you didn't at the start?
Learned the rate limit is per-account, not per-key
Lacked
What was missing: information, tools, time, access, clarity. Absences, not mistakes.
Ask: What did you need and not have?
Lacked a staging database with realistic data volume
Longed for
Wishes beyond the team's immediate control. Useful upward signal, and a release valve.
Ask: What did you wish for, however unrealistic?
Longed for a decision on the API version before we built on it
What a filled-in board looks like
An eight person team the week after shipping a six month billing migration, running 90 minutes.
Liked
Liked how early we got a working prototype in front of users
Liked that we froze scope at the halfway point and held it
Liked having one person own the cutover plan end to end
Learned
Learned the rate limit is per-account, not per-key
Learned the legacy proration logic has three special cases nobody had written down
Learned finance needed two weeks of parallel running, not the two days we planned
Lacked
Lacked a staging database with realistic data volume
Lacked any way to test a month-end close without waiting for month end
Lacked a named contact in finance for the first two months
Longed for
Longed for a decision on the API version before we built on it
Longed for the scope freeze to apply to the teams around us too
Longed for more than one person who can read the old billing code
What grouping surfaced
- Three Learned cards were things a document could have told the team, which makes them a documentation gap rather than knowledge gained.
- Lacked and Longed for were pointing at one problem: the team could not rehearse the risky part before doing it for real.
What they left with
- Dev writes the proration special cases and the parallel-running requirement into the billing runbook this week.
- Maya asks for a month-end simulation environment in the next platform planning round, using the migration as the argument.
When to use it
- End of a milestone, quarter, release or project
- Retros where knowledge transfer matters as much as process
- Teams that have just finished something unfamiliar
- Onboarding reviews and post-project reflection
When not to: It's too broad for a routine two-week sprint. Asking what the team learned every fortnight produces filler by the third round. Save it for the end of something.
Attributed to Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener, the four Ls were designed for reflection across a release or project rather than a two-week iteration.
Running it
- 01Set the stage and name the period: a release, not a sprint.5 min
- 02Silent writing across four columns. Four needs more time than three.15 min
- 03Reveal and group. Learned cards often deserve writing down somewhere permanent.15 min
- 04Vote, with four or five dots each given the extra column.5 min
- 05Actions from Lacked; escalations from Longed for.15 min
Facilitation notes
Learned is the column teams skip and regret. Copy those cards into your documentation before the board is forgotten.
Lacked usually converts to actions more cleanly than a 'what went wrong' column, because an absence names its own fix.
Longed for is not wasted time even when nothing is actionable. It tells a manager what the team can't fix alone.
Variations
Learned first
Open with Learned instead of Liked when the point of the session is knowledge transfer rather than process. It puts the most perishable column first, while people still remember the detail, and it sets the tone that this is a handover rather than a scoring exercise.
As an onboarding review
Run the four Ls with one person about their first ninety days. Lacked and Longed for turn into the clearest onboarding backlog you will get, because a new joiner is the only person who can still see what is missing.
Split across two sessions
For a project long enough that one sitting cannot cover it, take Liked and Learned in the first session and Lacked and Longed for in the second. The gap lets people remember things, and the second session starts with the knowledge already written down.
Reach for a different format when
It is a routine two-week sprint, where asking what the team learned produces filler.
Start / Stop / Continue retrospective →
The next milestone matters more than the last one and the risks are still ahead.
Sailboat retrospective →
Common questions
›What are the 4 Ls in a retrospective?
Liked, Learned, Lacked and Longed for. The team writes cards under each, covering what they valued, what knowledge they gained, what was missing, and what they wished for.
›When should you use a 4 Ls retrospective?
At the end of a milestone, release, quarter or project, anywhere the period is long enough that the team genuinely learned something. It's too broad for a routine sprint.
›What's the difference between Lacked and Longed for?
Lacked is something the team needed and could plausibly have had: a tool, data, access. Longed for is a wish that's usually outside the team's control, which makes it a signal to escalate rather than an action.
›Who invented the 4 Ls retrospective?
It is attributed to Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener, who designed it for reflection across a release or a project rather than a two week iteration. That origin is why it reads as too broad when a team tries to run it every sprint.
›Is there a 5 Ls retrospective?
Some teams add a fifth column, usually Loathed or Loved, to give strong feeling somewhere to go. It works, but if that column is the one filling up then the team is asking an emotional question, and Mad / Sad / Glad asks it better.
›Where should the Learned cards go afterwards?
Somewhere that outlives the board, on the day of the retro. A runbook, an onboarding doc, an architecture note. Learned is the column teams skip copying out and regret, because the knowledge was only ever in the room.
Other formats
Run a Liked / Learned / Lacked / Longed for retro now
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