4L Retrospective Examples and Free Template

Are you looking for “4L retrospective examples”? Then you’ve come to the right place🎉
Here, I’ll explain how the 4L retrospective works and give you some examples👀

First things first: the name 4L Retrospective comes from the 4 questions asked in the retrospective, namely:

👉🏽“Liked” (What did the team like about the last sprint?)

👉🏽“Lacquered” (What shortcomings were there in the last sprint?)

👉🏽“Longed for” (What things did the team want that are not yet available?)

👉🏽“Learned” (What did the team learn in the last sprint?)

You came here not only for the questions, but also for some examples of the 4L Retrospective. So let’s take a closer look at these questions🔍

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👉🏽Liked

The first question is pretty easy to answer. Or is it not?
In fact, there’s more to this one word than meets the eye. At least that’s what the retrospectives have shown where I’ve used the 4L retrospective✅.

If you look closer, it’s not just about what you liked about the last sprint, but whether you liked things during the sprint.

What I mean exactly is that things always seem different in retrospect than during the sprint. And that’s exactly what I want to encourage team members to reflect on in this retrospective💭.

Were there things that you liked during the sprint that might not seem so exciting now? Were there things that seemed unremarkable during the sprint but in retrospect led to a positive development? Or is it the case that the perception of positive events during the sprint and after the sprint coincide?🌞

Seems pretty complicated when you consider that this is just a “Liked” question. However, for me, a good retrospective is one where you also look at things from new perspectives.

4L Retrospective Examples “Liked”:

💡During the sprint, I was excited about implementing the new feature in our software. Although it was fun, the impact seems to be quite modest.

💡I had a one-on-one conversation with one of the team members, and although at first it felt like it wasn’t time well spent, it turned out to be very helpful for our teamwork over the last few days.

💡The pace of work in this sprint has felt very good and in hindsight I’m very pleased with how much we’ve achieved in the last two weeks.

👉🏽Lacked

When it comes to “Lacked,” the question is: “What shortcomings did we have during the sprint?”
This refers to the fact that something was missing in the last sprint. A thing or circumstance that could have been produced and should also be produced in the coming sprint cycle⭕.

4L Retrospective Examples “Lacked”:

💡Due to my poor time management, I felt very stressed when it came to the amount of tasks I had to complete.

💡We introduced some new features that we didn’t know exactly what they were for. That was very frustrating.

👉🏽Longed for

Even though the terms “Lacked” and “Longed for” seem very similar at first glance, there is a big difference between them👀
“Lacked” refers more to the things that have been missing so far and that you can change in the short term.
”Longed for,” on the other hand, refers to the things that you and your team would like to see in the future and that they would work towards. So the real question behind “longed for” is “What things did the team want that are not yet available?”🎁

4L Retrospective Example “Longed for”:

💡Our ticketing and bug reporting is very unstructured. It would be nice if we could implement a clearer process for this in the future so that we can ensure higher quality and a faster pace.

👉🏽Learned

From my point of view, you can also look at the “Learned” aspect from two different directions.
On the one hand, you can derive direct learnings from the sprint, but on the other hand, you can also learn from the previous points of the retro (Like, Lacked, Longed for).
That’s also why I always like to put the question “What can we learn?” at the end of this retrospective🔚

4L Retrospective Examples “Learned”:

💡A clearer structure in communicating problems can ensure a higher standard of quality in implementation.

💡When problems arise between two team members, it’s good to address them as soon as possible. This way, you can make sure that the problems don’t drag on and only cause more inconvenience.

Conclusion – 4L Retrospective⚡

As you can see from the 4L retrospective examples, this retrospective can be much more than just 4 simple questions.

I don’t want to make the questions more complicated than they are, but it’s still important to take advantage of the depth this retrospective has to offer🏆

To ensure this, it makes a lot of sense to explain the 4Ls in more detail to your team members or to formulate the questions behind the 4Ls more concretely. As in the example “Longed for” -> “What things did the team want that are not yet available?”

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