The 4L’s Retrospective – Scrum Retrospectives

I facilitated the latest retrospective my team had last week and decided to try Happiness Histogram and The 4 L’s technique

Happiness Histogram

1. Draw a chart on the wall with numbers from 1 to 5 along the x (horizontal) axis
2. Ask each member of the team to rate the last iteration/period to be retrospected from 1 to 5. This can be done by calling out or private vote on a post-it note to ensure honesty.
3. For each answer add a block to the chart against the number in the style of a histogram.

It was very great that we get mainly 4s and 5s so that there was no need to spend much more time on it. All team members felt glad and worked smoothly in that takt.(See the following picture)

The 4L’s Retrospective

We had 4 posters around the room representing each of the L’s:

• Liked
• Learned
• Lacked
• Longed for

Steps for the 4 L’s

1. Hang four posters, one for each L, around the room, titled appropriately.
2. Ask people to individually jot down what they Liked, Learned, Lacked, and Longed For – one per sticky note.  When the time is up (5-10 minutes), they silently place their notes on each poster.
3. Divide the group into four subgroups; assign an “L” poster to each subgroup. They read all the notes, cluster as appropriate and identify themes.
4. Each team reports out on the themes.
   
5. The entire group decides how they might use the data.
   

Here is our user stories and tasks of this takt: