Mad, Sad, Glad retrospective template

An emotions-first retro that surfaces how the sprint felt before anyone proposes a fix.

Mad, Sad, Glad is a three-column retrospective built on feelings rather than process. The team writes what made them angry, what disappointed them, and what made them happy — and only then works out what caused each one. It is the format to reach for after a rough sprint, when going straight to process fixes would skip over the thing everyone is actually carrying.

The emotional framing is the point, not decoration. People will write "the escalation on Thursday made me furious" long before they will write a neutral card about interrupt-driven work, and the frustration is what makes the underlying problem visible. The facilitator’s job is to take those cards and get to causes, so the session ends with changes rather than a shared bad mood.

Timebox

45–60 minutes

Team size

3–10 people

Cadence

After a rough sprint or incident, or every third or fourth sprint as a temperature check

The Mad, Sad, Glad board

Mad

What frustrated or angered you this sprint?

  • The Thursday escalation wiped out two days of planned work
  • My PR sat unreviewed for three days while I was blocked
  • Requirements changed twice and nobody told the team
  • We were asked to estimate again for a project already committed
  • The deploy broke because someone bypassed the checklist
  • Being pulled into meetings that could have been a message

Sad

What disappointed you, or fell short of what you hoped for?

  • We cut the accessibility work again to make the date
  • The feature shipped, and nobody outside the team noticed
  • I never got to the refactor I have been promising for months
  • Two people carried the on-call load while the rest of us shipped
  • We learned about the customer complaint from the sales channel
  • The demo felt rushed and did not show what we actually built

Glad

What made you happy or proud this sprint?

  • The migration ran clean at 6am with nobody watching nervously
  • Two people jumped on the incident without being asked
  • The new starter shipped their first change on day three
  • We said no to a mid-sprint request and it stuck
  • Pairing on the parser was genuinely fun
  • Support said the fix cut their ticket volume in half

How to run a Mad, Sad, Glad retrospective

  1. 1

    Set the stage and make it safe (5 min)

    State plainly that the session is about what people felt and that nothing here is a performance review. If the team is tense, run a quick anonymous 1–5 safety check first — if the room averages below 3, switch to an anonymous written format instead of a live discussion.

  2. 2

    Silent writing (8–10 min)

    Everyone fills all three columns privately with cards hidden. Ask for specifics: "the Thursday escalation" is workable, "management" is not. Hidden cards matter more in this format than any other, because nobody wants to be the first to write something angry.

  3. 3

    Reveal and group by cause (6 min)

    Reveal everything and cluster by what caused it, not by which column it came from. A Mad card and a Sad card about the same interrupted sprint belong in one theme — grouping by emotion just sorts the symptoms.

  4. 4

    Read Glad out loud (3 min)

    Go through the Glad column in full before touching the difficult themes. It is not a warm-up: it tells you which practices survived a bad sprint, and those are usually worth protecting deliberately.

  5. 5

    Vote and dig into causes (15–20 min)

    Vote on the themes, then take the top two or three. For each, move from the feeling to the mechanism: what happened, how often, and what would have had to be different. Ask "what would need to change for this not to happen again" rather than "who did this".

  6. 6

    Close with two owned actions (5 min)

    End with at most two or three action items, each with a named owner and a date. An emotions-first retro that ends without decisions leaves the team feeling worse than when it started — the closing step is what makes the venting worth it.

Mad Sad Glad examples for engineering teams

Mad

  • Three days of work thrown away when the requirement changed
  • The flaky test was rerun instead of fixed for the fifth sprint
  • A hotfix went straight to production with no review
  • I was on-call and in full-day meetings on the same day

Sad

  • We dropped the test coverage work again
  • The service we spent a quarter on has eleven users
  • Only one person understands the payments code and it is still not written down
  • We never celebrated the migration finishing

Glad

  • Zero incidents this sprint after the alerting cleanup
  • The build went from 22 minutes to 6
  • Someone rewrote the runbook without being asked
  • The junior’s design review caught a real problem

Mad Sad Glad examples for product and cross-functional teams

Mad

  • Priorities changed on the Wednesday of a two-week sprint
  • Design was asked for "just a quick mockup" four times
  • We found out the launch date from a customer email
  • The same decision was relitigated in three separate meetings

Sad

  • The research we ran did not change a single decision
  • We shipped the smallest version of the idea and called it done
  • Two teammates are clearly burned out and we planned as if they were not
  • The feedback we promised customers never went back to them

Glad

  • The pilot group loved it and said so in their own words
  • Engineering and design paired on the flow instead of handing it over
  • We killed a feature that was not working — quickly, without ego
  • Support was in the kickoff for the first time

Mad Sad Glad examples for remote teams

Emotional signal is the first thing lost to distributed work — there are no corridor conversations to pick it up. Anonymous cards do most of the work here; consider collecting them a day early so people in other time zones write when they are not tired.

Mad

  • Every meeting was scheduled in one time zone’s afternoon
  • A decision was made in a call I was asleep for and announced as final
  • I spent an hour looking for information that lives in one person’s head
  • Being pinged at 9pm about something that could wait

Sad

  • I have not spoken to half the team about anything but tickets
  • The written updates dried up after two weeks
  • The new joiner has been here a month and still asks in DMs
  • The team channel is quiet unless something is broken

Glad

  • Recorded demos meant everyone actually saw the work
  • Overlap hours stayed protected for decisions
  • Written decision summaries after every call
  • The virtual coffee rota is genuinely good

Best for

  • Sprints that went badly, where process-first formats would feel tone-deaf
  • Teams where tension is obvious in standups but never gets named
  • Post-incident or post-crunch reviews, once the immediate work is done
  • Established teams with enough trust to say what actually annoyed them

Facilitation tips

Group by cause, not by emotion

Cards about the same event land in different columns depending on who wrote them. Clustering by what happened — not by Mad, Sad, or Glad — turns three lists of symptoms into two or three real themes.

Check whether the room is safe enough

This format asks people to say they were angry. If a manager who is part of the frustration is in the room, or trust is low, run an anonymous 1–5 safety check first and switch to anonymous cards or a smaller session if the answer is low.

Move from feeling to mechanism

The emotion gets the problem onto the board; it does not fix anything by itself. For every theme discussed, ask what specifically happened and what would have to change for it not to happen again — that question is the whole difference between a retro and a vent.

Never end without actions

A session that surfaces frustration and closes with "thanks, good discussion" leaves the team worse off. Two owned action items are enough, but there must be some, and the next retro must open by checking them.

Variations

Glad, Sad, Mad

The same columns in the opposite order, so the board opens with what went well. Useful with new teams or when a session risks starting hot — the order changes what people write first.

Mad, Sad, Glad, Afraid

Adds a fourth column for what worries people about what is coming. Worth it before a risky launch or a reorganisation, when anxiety about the next month is the real material.

Emotional timeline first

Draw the sprint as a line and have everyone plot their highs and lows against dates before writing cards. The shape of the line usually locates the cause faster than the cards do.

Anonymous async collection

Collect cards anonymously over a day or two and cluster them before the session, so the live meeting is only causes and decisions. The safest version for low-trust or newly formed teams.

Frequently asked questions

What is a Mad Sad Glad retrospective?+

It is a three-column retrospective where the team writes what made them mad, what made them sad, and what made them glad about the period under review. Unlike process-first formats, it starts from how the work felt and then works backwards to the causes, which is why it suits sprints that went badly.

What goes in each column?+

Mad is frustration and anger — interruptions, blockers, things that wasted the team’s effort. Sad is disappointment: work that got cut, goals missed, things the team wished had gone differently. Glad is what made people happy or proud. Specific events work far better than general statements in all three.

When should you use Mad Sad Glad?+

After a rough sprint, a difficult incident, or a period of crunch — anywhere going straight to process fixes would ignore what people are carrying. It also works as a periodic temperature check every third or fourth sprint. It is a poor fit for a routine sprint where the team just needs actions.

How is it different from Rose, Bud, Thorn?+

Rose, Bud, Thorn is reflective but forward-looking: the Bud column asks for potential and opportunities. Mad, Sad, Glad is entirely about what already happened and how it felt, with a column specifically for frustration. Choose Mad Sad Glad when there is something to get out on the table, and Rose Bud Thorn when the team is steady and looking ahead.

How do you stop it becoming a complaint session?+

Three things: ask for specific events rather than general grievances, group cards by cause instead of by emotion, and require every discussed theme to end in a change with an owner. The Mad column is a route to the underlying problem, not the destination.

Is Glad Sad Mad the same format?+

Yes — the columns are identical, only the order differs. Some facilitators lead with Glad so the session opens on something positive, which is worth doing with new teams or when the sprint has left people raw.

Run Mad, Sad, Glad online in FocusRetro

The Mad, Sad, Glad template is built in: pick it when creating a board, invite the team with a link, and run the phases with timers and blind voting. Free plan available at focusretro.com.

Open the template free

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Related guides

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What is a retrospective? The complete guide for teams

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Retrospective timebox calculator

How long Mad, Sad, Glad should run for your sprint length and team size, split across the five phases.

Icebreaker and check-in questions

Openers for the first two minutes of a Mad, Sad, Glad session, sorted by situation.