4Ls Retrospective

Capture what was Liked, Learned, Lacked, and Longed For — a balanced format that covers satisfaction, growth, gaps, and future desires.

What Is the 4Ls Format?

The 4Ls retrospective was created by Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener. It encourages teams to reflect on four distinct dimensions of their sprint experience, producing richer and more varied feedback than simpler formats.

👍

Liked

What did the team enjoy or appreciate about this sprint? Positive experiences, tools, processes, or interactions worth recognizing.

💡

Learned

What new knowledge, skills, or insights did the team gain? Discoveries about the product, codebase, processes, or team dynamics.

📉

Lacked

What was missing that would have helped the team succeed? Resources, information, support, or clarity that wasn't available.

✨

Longed For

What does the team wish they had — not just this sprint, but going forward? Aspirational improvements, tools, or changes to working practices.

Example Cards

👍 Liked

The new CI pipeline — deployments are so much faster

Team was very responsive in Slack this sprint

Clear acceptance criteria on most stories

💡 Learned

Learned how the legacy authentication module works

Test coverage was much lower than we thought

Pairing with the backend team taught me a lot

📉 Lacked

Access to the staging environment for the first three days

A clear product vision for the roadmap items

Enough time for proper code review

✨ Longed For

Better observability tooling — we fly blind in production

A dedicated UX designer on the team

More time for refactoring and tech debt

Benefits of the 4Ls Format

Encourages knowledge-sharing — the Learned column surfaces insights others may have missed
The Longed For column captures strategic improvements beyond sprint-level fixes
Balanced across positive, gap-finding, and aspirational thinking
Produces richer retrospective outputs than simpler three-column formats
Great for teams that value continuous learning and professional growth

Recommended Situations

Teams with moderate retrospective experience ready for more depth
After sprints with significant learning or technical exploration
When the team wants to identify longer-term improvements, not just sprint-level fixes
Quarterly or milestone retrospectives where deeper reflection is valuable

🛠️ Need something different? BugNBrag's Scrum Master can add custom columns to any session — so you can extend or adapt any template to fit your team's specific needs.

Run a 4Ls retrospective with your team

Select the 4Ls template in BugNBrag — free, no account required.

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