Are you searching for the “retrospective liked learned lacked”? Then you are probably meaning the 4L retrospective. I am happy to explain it to you.
Retrospective Liked Learned Lacked
The 4 retrospective questions asked
The retrospective “liked learned lacked” typically consists of 4 simple questions. It is called 4L retrospective, because these 4 questions each contain a verb beginning with the letter “l”. Here they are:
- [Optional: Looking at the last sprint/weeks…] What did you like?
- Learned: What did you learn?
- Lacked: What did you lack?
- Longed for: What did you long for?
Retrospective Liked Learned Lacked - 3 tips
- As a Scrum Master and Psychologist, I recommend to use an adequate check-in or warm-up question in every retrospective, not just the retrospective ‘liked learned lacked’. It has a lot of potential to lay the stage for more engaged discussions during the main part of the retrospective.
- Did you know that one of the preconditions of successful teams is Psychological safety? Okay, you already know. Well, do you know a simple but good signal for a psychologically safe team? The speaking time of the team members is evenly distributed. Of course, this is hard to reach. But one simple thing you might do is firstly raise awareness for that in the team. And secondly, you might actively ask more introverted team members for their thoughts and comments.
- When doing an online retrospective, consider using a retrospective tool. Retrospectives are the most important ceremony in agile. So you should be ready to invest into them. Currently you are using a whiteboard or a task management tool? Well, would you use a whiteboard to do your annual sales planning or to design a new mockup? Right, with the right tools, that is a lot easier. So I recommend to use a team development tool like Echometer Echometer to help you with your team development. Echometer is free for up to 12 team members and even helps you to implement a continuous team health check based on psychological know how. In case you are not sure yet which to try out, feel free to have a look at our comparison of 14 retrospective tools online for beginners and pros.
Conclusion - Retrospective Liked Learned Lacked
The retrospective “Liked Learned Lacked Longed for” is one of the retrospective classics. I hope this post helped you to facilitate it in a successful way.
In case you are interested in surprising your team with some other classical or very fancy retrospective ideas, I recommend to have a look at our post on 32 kickass retrospective ideas for beginners and professionals..
