The guys at Agility in Mind (AIM) recently ran a retrospective for me. I thought their approach was cute and worth a quick post. They prompted the team for things that made them glad, sad and mad.
In my retrospectives I look for:
- Things that went well
- Things to improve
- Things that didn’t go so well
The AIM guys did the same but labeled each of these as categories “Glad”, “Sad”, and “Mad”. I like this because it focuses on emotions rather than process. For example, I always encourage people to share “bouquets”, i.e. things to thank people for, and this fits more comfortably within “Glad” than “Things that went well”.
Glad Sad Mad Retrospective
Disclaimer: I’m sure the AIM guys didn’t invent Glad, Sad, Mad retrospectives. But as I learnt this approach from them I thought I’d give them the credit.
It really helps getting input from others, it also forces you to make a decision more quickly. And it also helps where others have delt with the same problems before and some incidents might have a correlation with the other. It also helps te get a bigger picture.