Mad / Sad / Glad retrospective
Mad / Sad / Glad asks how the sprint felt rather than how it ran. That sounds softer than it is: emotion is where a team stores the problems it hasn't articulated yet, and this format is the fastest way to surface the ones nobody has words for.
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The columns
Mad
Things that caused real frustration. Blockers, repeated friction, work that was wasted.
Ask: What made you angry this sprint?
Mad that the staging environment was down for three days
Sad
Disappointments rather than frustrations: things that fell short, got dropped, or didn't land.
Ask: What disappointed you, even if nobody's at fault?
Sad we cut the accessibility work again
Glad
What genuinely went well. Wins, help received, moments worth repeating.
Ask: What made you glad to be on this team?
Glad the on-call handover actually worked this time
What a filled-in board looks like
A six person team in the sprint after a two day outage, running an hour with the engineering manager out of the room.
Mad
Mad that the staging environment was down for three days
Mad that we heard about the config change from the incident, not the PR
Mad that one alert paged three people and none of them owned it
Sad
Sad we cut the accessibility work again
Sad that whoever fixed it spent their weekend on it
Sad that the postmortem actions from March are still open
Glad
Glad the on-call handover actually worked this time
Glad two people volunteered before anyone was asked
Glad the status page updates went out without anyone chasing
What grouping surfaced
- Two Mad cards and one Sad card were the same thing: changes landing without anyone downstream knowing.
- The Glad column was mostly people covering for each other, which is worth naming and also a sign the system is running on goodwill.
What they left with
- Ana makes a platform reviewer required on any config change to shared infrastructure.
- Tom reopens the March postmortem actions at the next retro, with a yes or no on each.
When to use it
- After a hard sprint, an incident, or a missed deadline
- Teams that have gone quiet in process-shaped retros
- Detecting burnout and friction before it shows up in delivery
- Teams that already trust each other enough to be honest
When not to: Don't use it with a team that isn't safe yet, or in the first retro with a new manager in the room. Asking people what made them angry before they trust the audience produces a wall of neutral cards and teaches them the exercise is theatre.
It's a variation on the 'Mad Sad Glad' check-in used widely in agile coaching, built on the observation that people notice how something felt long before they can explain what caused it.
Running it
- 01Set the stage. Read the prime directive out loud. This format needs it.5 min
- 02Silent writing, cards hidden. Emotional cards especially shouldn't be anchored.10 min
- 03Reveal and read out. Give each card a moment; don't rush to solutions.15 min
- 04Vote on what the team wants to change.5 min
- 05Convert the top themes into actions with owners.15 min
Facilitation notes
Resist solving during the read-out. A card that gets solved in ten seconds usually wasn't understood.
Mad cards are about situations, not people. If a name appears on a card, redirect to the system that made it possible.
Glad is not filler. It tells you which practices are load-bearing for morale.
Variations
Mad / Sad / Glad / Afraid
Adds a column for what people are worried about rather than what already happened. It catches the thing a team knows is coming and has not said out loud, and it gives an anxious room somewhere to put that feeling other than Mad.
Glad first
Run the columns in reverse, starting with Glad. Writing something good first makes the hard column easier to fill, which matters most with a team doing this format for the first time.
Happy / Meh / Sad
A lighter labelling for teams that find Mad too strong, or in cultures where naming anger at work is a bigger step than the format intends. The middle column collects the things that were merely disappointing, which is where most of the useful material sits anyway.
Reach for a different format when
The team is already talking freely and what it needs now is concrete process change.
Start / Stop / Continue retrospective →
The period under review is a whole release, and what the team learned matters as much as how it felt.
Liked / Learned / Lacked / Longed for retrospective →
Common questions
›What is a Mad Sad Glad retrospective?
A format where the team categorises the sprint by emotional response: what made them mad, what made them sad, and what made them glad. It surfaces friction that process-focused formats miss.
›When should I use Mad Sad Glad instead of Start Stop Continue?
Use it after a hard sprint, an incident, or when the team has gone quiet. Start Stop Continue is better when you need concrete process change and the team is already talking freely.
›How do you turn feelings into actions?
Look for the cause under the card. Four Mad cards about waiting is one action about handoffs. The feeling identifies where to look; the action addresses the system that produced it.
›Can you run Mad Sad Glad anonymously?
You can, and it is a reasonable choice for a team that is not safe yet. The cost is that you cannot follow up on a card nobody will claim. Keeping cards hidden until everyone has written gets most of the benefit and leaves the author able to explain what they meant.
›What if everybody only writes Glad cards?
That is information, not a failed retro. Either the sprint genuinely went well, or the room does not believe the Mad column is safe. Ask directly which one it is. If it is the second, switch to a process format and come back to this one later.
›How long does a Mad Sad Glad retro take?
About an hour, and it does not compress well. The read-out is the part that matters and it needs time, because an emotional card that gets solved in ten seconds usually was not understood.
Other formats
Run a Mad / Sad / Glad retro now
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