What is a Mad Sad Glad Retrospective
The Mad Sad Glad retrospective is an agile practice designed to help teams articulate their emotions during the reflection process. This method categorizes feelings into three distinct areas: Mad, Sad, and Glad. By focusing on these emotions, teams can gain valuable insights that contribute to both emotional well-being and continuous process improvement.
Mad
These are moments of frustration, blockers, or inefficiencies that triggered strong negative reactions during the sprint. This could include miscommunication, broken processes, bottlenecks, or decisions that negatively affected progress or morale.
Sad
Covers disappointments, unmet expectations, or emotional letdowns that impacted individual or team motivation. This might involve missed goals, lack of support, overlooked efforts, or situations that made the team feel disconnected or undervalued.
Glad
Highlights successes, positive experiences, or pleasant surprises that boosted morale and should be celebrated. These can include team wins, helpful tools or practices, acts of support, or anything that contributed to a sense of progress and satisfaction.
When to Use a Glad Sad Mad Retrospective
- After a Major Release or Sprint: Gauge residual stress, celebrate wins, and surface blockers before starting the next cycle to improve planning accuracy.
- Leadership or Team Changes: During organizational shifts or new team compositions, uncover emotional responses to ensure smooth onboarding and alignment.
- Tool or Process Adoption: When implementing new software or workflows, identify frustration points or positive surprises to refine onboarding and training.
- High-Stress Periods: In crunch times or critical deadlines, re-center focus on well-being and address burnout signals before they escalate.
- Periodic Health Checks: As part of quarterly or bi-annual reviews, assess emotional trends over time and track improvements in team dynamics.
Why Emotional Feedback Matters in Retrospectives
- Human Insight Drives Improvement: Emotional feedback captures what metrics miss—team morale, frustrations, and motivators, giving context to sprint outcomes.
- Builds Trust and Psychological Safety: Validating emotions fosters honest conversations, strengthens team bonds, and encourages open sharing.
- Improves Transparency and Collaboration: Candid feedback breaks down silos and enables deeper team alignment across roles and responsibilities.
- Reveals Hidden Blockers: Emotional patterns often surface issues that impact performance but go unnoticed in task-based reviews.
- Encourages Empathy Across Teams: Shared experiences foster understanding and problem-solving across functions and roles.
- Balances People and Process: Complements technical retrospectives by putting relationships, emotions, and team well-being at the center.
- Drives Engagement and Action: Teams that reflect emotionally tend to collaborate more effectively, resolve conflicts faster, and turn feedback into real change.
How to Run a Mad Sad Glad Retrospective Using Creately
Step 1: Open the Sad Mad Glad Template
Start by selecting a Mad Sad Glad retrospective template in Creately. Invite relevant team members and set clear objectives. Establish ground rules for respectful, blame-free sharing to ensure psychological safety.
Step 2: Reflect (5–10 minutes)
Ask participants to reflect individually and add one thought per Mad, Sad, or Glad note. Use Creately’s drag-and-drop sticky notes or cards to capture emotions concisely—keep each note to one or two sentences for clarity.
Step 3: Group Feedback(10 minutes)
Facilitate clustering of similar feedback into themes directly on the canvas. Encourage the team to assign clear, descriptive names to each group to bring focus to underlying emotional patterns.
Step 4: Discuss (15–20 minutes)
Guide a structured discussion around the key themes. Encourage participants to explain the context and emotional drivers behind their input. Focus on learning instead of blaming, to promote honest sharing and deeper understanding.
Step 5: Prioritize and Turn Insights into Actions (5–10 minutes)
Use voting within Creately to identify the most critical themes or impactful highlights. This helps the team align on what to address first in the next sprint or project cycle. Document agreed-upon actions, assign owners, and organize next steps directly on Creately’s Kanban boards.
Step 6: Share and Keep Everyone Aligned
Once your retrospective board is complete, share it with your team using a live link, or export it as a PDF or image for documentation. You can also present directly from the canvas using Presentation Mode to walk stakeholders through key insights and action items—keeping everyone aligned, even after the session ends.
Step 7: Use Creately’s AI Mad Sad Glad template
Simply input your team’s feedback notes or project reflections, and click ‘Generate’. The AI automatically organizes inputs into Mad, Sad, and Glad categories, suggests themes, and highlights potential action points—giving you a structured starting point in seconds.
Tips for Setting Up a Safe and Inclusive Retro Environment
Establish Ground Rules
Agree on respect, confidentiality, and no-blame language. Clear norms ensure participants feel secure when sharing frustrations or disappointments and prevent the session from devolving into finger-pointing.
Use Icebreakers
Start with brief activities like a mood check or “One word to describe your week” to relax the team and build rapport before diving into deeper emotions.
Provide Anonymity Options
Allow anonymous contributions via digital sticky notes or polling features so those hesitant to speak openly can still share candid feedback.
Maintain Accessibility
Ensure the glad sad mad retrospective template is shared among remote and in-person participants to guarantee equal participation.
Timeboxing
Allocate fixed time slots for each phase—collect, group, discuss, prioritize—so the session stays focused, efficient, and respects everyone’s schedule.
Free Mad Sad Glad Retrospective Templates By Creately
Helpful Resources for Making Retrospectives
A comprehensive guide covering all there is to know about retrospectives.
Learn all about common mistakes to avoid when running retrospective meetings.
Learn fun ways of conducting retrospectives for hybrid teams.
FAQs about Mad Sad Glad Retrospectives
What are good icebreaker questions for a Glad Sad Mad retrospective?
- “What’s one small win from this sprint that made you smile?” - Encourages positive recall and sets a collaborative tone.
- “If this sprint were a movie title, what would it be?” - Adds humor while surfacing initial feelings about the sprint.
- “What’s something you wish had gone differently—but learned from anyway?” - Gently introduces reflection on challenges without blame.
What makes Sad Mad Glad different from other formats like 4Ls?
Is the Sad Mad Glad format suitable for all team types?
What if team members are uncomfortable sharing during a retrospective?
Can I reuse or duplicate the Mad Sad Glad board for future retrospectives?
Resources
Kumar, Samant. “The Agile Scrum Ceremony Most Talked about but Least Paid Attention To.” Advances in Logistics, Operations, and Management Science, 30 May 2024, pp. 111–118, https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-3318-1.ch006. Accessed 14 July 2025.
Przybyłek, Adam, and Dagmara Kotecka. “Making Agile Retrospectives More Awesome.” IEEE Xplore, 1 Sept. 2017, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8104707/.
