The 4 Ls retrospective
Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for. Four questions that help a team reflect on a sprint, a project or an event. How to run a 4Ls retrospective well.
The 4 Ls asks four questions: what did you like, what did you learn, what was lacking, and what did you long for? Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener wrote it up in 2010, after Gorman mentioned a three-L version (Liked, Lacked, Longed for) at an agile event and people started sharing it online.
It's a reflective format. It asks each person about their own experience, and its Learned column captures something most formats miss: what the team knows now that it didn't before.
The four columns
- Liked: What did you enjoy? Personal and specific: "Pairing with the design team on the onboarding screens." These show what people value.
- Learned: What did you learn? Anything new, technical or not: "Our staging data is six months old." This column is the format's real strength.
- Lacked: What was missing? Something the team needed and didn't have: time, information, a tool, a decision. "We lacked a clear owner for the API changes."
- Longed for: What do you wish we had? Wishes for the future, which can be bigger than a fix: "A week with no meetings to clear tech debt."
When to use it
It suits the end of a sprint, but it's at its best after something with a lot of learning in it: a project, a new technology, a training course, a workshop. Because it asks about personal experience, it also works for groups that don't work together every day.
To talk about how people feel, Mad · Sad · Glad is more direct. To give credit at the end of a project, use Project Wrap-up. For clear decisions about practices, try Starfish.
How to run it
- Set the stage (5 minutes). Name the period or piece of work. Explain the difference between Lacked (what was missing) and Longed for (what you wish for), because people mix them up.
- Write alone (10 minutes). Everyone writes in all four columns, with at least one Learned card each. It's the column people skip.
- Group (5 to 10 minutes). Merge duplicates. Something people lacked often reappears as something they longed for, so put those together.
- Vote (3 minutes). Spend votes on the topics that matter most. Hidden tallies keep the result honest.
- Discuss (20 minutes). Take the topics in order of votes. Spend a few minutes on Learned even if it didn't win votes: what should the team write down or share?
- Agree actions (5 to 10 minutes). Most actions come from Lacked and Longed for. Pick two or three, each with an owner and a due date.
- Close (3 minutes). Read back the actions and a few Liked cards.
Tips
- Capture the learning. Put the important Learned cards in your team's docs, not only the retro notes.
- Let Longed for be ambitious. Not every wish becomes an action. Some show you where the team wants to go.
- Use it beyond sprints. It works after training sessions, offsites and events, and with people who've never been to a retro.
Run it in Scrums
Choose New session → Retrospective on your team's page and pick 4 Ls from the formats. Everyone writes privately, and other people's cards stay face-down until the facilitator reveals them, so nobody's first card sets the tone. Then group similar cards (or let Auto-group cluster them), vote with hidden tallies, and discuss the topics in order, adding action items with an owner and a due date. Open action items come back in the next retro's Review step. Retros are anonymous by default, and Scrums is free.
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Questions
What are the 4 Ls in a retrospective?
Liked, Learned, Lacked and Longed for: what people liked, what they learned, what was missing, and what they wish the team had.
What's the difference between Lacked and Longed for?
Lacked looks back: something you needed and didn't have. Longed for looks forward: what you wish the team had. "We lacked test data" is a gap. "I long for a staging environment that matches production" is a direction.
How long does a 4Ls retrospective take?
About 45 to 60 minutes for a team of five to ten. Four columns produce more cards than three, so allow ten minutes for writing and keep the grouping brisk.