Retrospective templates
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4Ls Retrospective

The 4Ls retrospective creates more nuance than a positive-versus-negative review. It protects useful practices, captures learning, exposes missing support, and gives the team space to describe a better future.

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Duration
30–40 minutes
Team size
3–10 people
Best for
Learning-heavy sprints, project milestones, and teams tired of binary retro formats
4Ls retrospective template preview

What each column means

Use the prompts to keep cards specific. The examples show the level of detail that makes discussion and voting useful.

Column 1

Liked

What felt useful, enjoyable, effective, or worth repeating?

Example cards

  • Daily pairing made the unfamiliar code easier to change.
  • The smaller planning scope kept the sprint calm.
  • Customer feedback arrived before implementation finished.

Column 2

Learned

What new fact, skill, assumption, or pattern did we discover?

Example cards

  • The cache invalidation path affects more services than expected.
  • Shorter demos produce more specific product feedback.
  • We learned who needs to join accessibility reviews earlier.

Column 3

Lacked

What information, capability, time, ownership, or support was missing?

Example cards

  • We lacked realistic data for the performance test.
  • No one owned the cross-team dependency.
  • The story lacked a clear failure-state design.

Column 4

Longed For

What did we wish existed, happened sooner, or worked differently?

Example cards

  • A single place to see rollout readiness.
  • More uninterrupted time for the migration.
  • An earlier decision on which customer segment mattered first.

30–40 minutes agenda

A complete path from framing the room to assigning one concrete follow-up.

  1. 01

    Frame the period

    Name the sprint, release, or project stage being reviewed and explain how Lacked differs from Longed For.

    3 minutes
  2. 02

    Write across all four Ls

    Ask everyone to contribute silently to each column. Encourage specific moments and one observation per card.

    7 minutes
  3. 03

    Share without solving

    Read the cards by column and allow short clarifying questions. Save debate and solutions for the prioritized themes.

    6 minutes
  4. 04

    Group related evidence

    Cluster cards that describe the same pattern across different columns, such as a learning connected to something the team lacked.

    5 minutes
  5. 05

    Vote and discuss

    Vote on the themes with the greatest effect on team outcomes, then discuss causes, tradeoffs, and what should change.

    10 minutes
  6. 06

    Protect and improve

    Choose one behavior to preserve from Liked and one small experiment addressing a Lacked or Longed For theme.

    5 minutes

Use this format when

  • The sprint involved discovery, experiments, or unfamiliar work.
  • The team wants more depth than went well and did not go well.
  • People need room to name both practical gaps and emotional reactions.
  • A project milestone deserves reflection beyond delivery metrics.

Choose another format when

  • The group needs a very fast check-in with only one decision.
  • Participants do not yet understand the difference between Lacked and Longed For and there is no time to explain it.
  • A specific incident needs a factual timeline and blameless incident-review format.

Facilitation tips

  • Define Lacked as a missing input or support and Longed For as a desired future condition.
  • Ask what the team learned about the system, customer, process, and itself.
  • Do not treat Liked as filler; decide which successful conditions must be protected.
  • Connect cards across columns to reveal cause and effect.
  • End with a small experiment rather than an unowned wish list.

Useful variations

4Ls for a project milestone

Review the whole phase rather than one sprint and ask which learning should change the next milestone plan.

Anonymous 4Ls

Collect cards anonymously when the team is discussing missing support, workload, or decision-making confidence.

Customer-focused 4Ls

Write every card from the customer or user perspective to expose value, learning, missing needs, and desired outcomes.

Before the retro

Recommended warm-up

This or That

Use a quick, low-pressure choice round before the retrospective begins.

Play the warm-up

Frequently asked questions

What do the 4Ls stand for in a retrospective?

The 4Ls are Liked, Learned, Lacked, and Longed For. Together they cover positive experience, new knowledge, missing support, and desired future conditions.

What is the difference between Lacked and Longed For?

Lacked describes something necessary that was missing during the period. Longed For describes an improvement or future condition the team wishes it had.

How long does a 4Ls retrospective take?

A focused 4Ls retrospective usually takes 30–40 minutes for three to ten people, including silent writing, grouping, voting, discussion, and actions.

When is the 4Ls retrospective most useful?

It works especially well after learning-heavy sprints, experiments, project milestones, or whenever a binary positive/negative format no longer produces useful insight.

Related retrospective templates

Sailboat Retrospective

Map the forces moving the team forward, the anchors slowing it down, the risks ahead, and the destination everyone is trying to reach.

View template

Run this 4Ls retrospective

Open a board with Liked, Learned, Lacked, and Longed For ready for the team, then turn the strongest theme into an owned experiment.

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