What is Mad, Sad, Glad?
Mad, Sad, Glad is a retrospective with three columns named for emotions. Instead of asking "what should we change?", it asks "how did this sprint feel?", and only then gets to the changes. That ordering is the whole idea: a team that can name what frustrated it has a much easier time agreeing on what to fix.
Mad
What frustrated you. Blockers, broken tools, decisions made over your head, time wasted. The energy in this column is useful; it points at what people care about most.
Sad
What disappointed you. Missed goals, work that did not ship, a good idea that got dropped, a colleague leaving. Quieter than Mad, and often more important.
Glad
What you enjoyed or are proud of. Wins, help you got, moments the team worked well. This column is what makes people want to keep working together.
How to run one (about 40 minutes)
- Set expectations (2 min). Say out loud that Mad and Sad are invitations, not complaints to be defended against. The facilitator's job is to make the negative columns safe to fill.
- Collect anonymously (10 min). This format depends on anonymity more than any other. Nobody writes "I was frustrated by the review comments" under their own name.
- Group (5 min). Cluster the notes. Watch for the same theme appearing in both Mad and Sad; that is usually the sprint's real story.
- Vote (5 min). Votes decide which feelings become the team's agenda, so nobody has to argue for their own note.
- Discuss and act (15 min). Take the top Mad and Sad items and ask one question of each: "What would have made this not happen?" The answers are your action items. End on Glad, on purpose.
Mad, Sad, Glad examples for software teams
Mad
- The CI pipeline was red for two days and nobody owned fixing it.
- Scope was added mid-sprint again without anything being removed.
- Review comments arrived on Friday for a PR opened on Monday.
Sad
- We did not ship the onboarding flow we promised the support team.
- The refactor we planned got squeezed out by bug fixes for the third sprint in a row.
- We lost the only person who understood the billing integration.
Glad
- The outage on Tuesday was handled calmly and the postmortem was blameless.
- Pairing with the new joiner went well; they shipped their first change in week one.
- The demo landed and the customer actually said thank you.
Facilitation tips
- Give Glad equal time. Two of the three columns are negative. If you rush Glad, the retro ends on a low and people dread the next one.
- Translate feelings into causes, not blame. "Mad about slow reviews" becomes "PRs sit because nobody is assigned", which becomes "assign a reviewer when the PR opens".
- Do not run it every sprint. It is a reset for when things feel off. As a weekly default it becomes a venting ritual with no actions.
- Check the previous actions first. If last time's Mad items were never fixed, the team will not bother writing them again.
Questions teams ask
What is a Mad Sad Glad retrospective?
A three-column retro where notes are sorted by feeling: Mad for frustration, Sad for disappointment, Glad for what went well. The point is to surface friction that a task-only format hides.
Is it too negative?
It can be if the facilitator lets it. Give Glad equal time, finish on it, and make sure every Mad and Sad item that gets discussed leaves with an action or an explicit "we accept this".
Should the notes be anonymous?
Yes. Anonymous collection followed by open discussion gets the honesty without exposing anyone.
When should we use it?
After a hard sprint, when the team seems flat, or when your usual retro keeps producing the same polite notes.
More retrospective formats
See all five templates with guidance on choosing between them: Sprint retrospective templates. Related formats: Start, Stop, Continue, 4Ls, Sailboat, Rose, Bud, Thorn.
Run a Mad, Sad, Glad retrospective now
Anonymous notes, grouping, voting and action items are built in. Create a board and share the link; the team needs no account.
Start the retro