Mad Sad Glad

What is Mad Sad Glad?

Mad Sad Glad is a retrospective format that sorts the sprint by emotion instead of by process. Each person writes what made them angry, what disappointed them and what made them happy, and the board turns those feelings into concrete, discussable events. It is one of the easiest formats to explain — three words, no training required — which is why it is often the first retrospective a new team runs.

The reason it works is that emotion is a faster index than analysis. People struggle to answer "what went wrong with our process this sprint" and answer instantly when asked what annoyed them. The annoyance points at the process problem, and the process problem is what you actually fix.

When to use Mad Sad Glad

• A team's first retrospective — the format needs no explanation and produces material immediately.
• After a tense or chaotic sprint, when there is unspoken friction that a process-shaped format will route around.
• When previous retrospectives produced only safe, technical items and no one mentioned how the work actually felt.
• After a release, an incident or a deadline crunch, when people need to say the thing out loud before they can analyse it.
• With a mixed group — designers, analysts, support and engineers all have feelings about a sprint even when they do not share a process vocabulary.

It is a weaker choice when the team needs to plan a change rather than surface one. If you already know the problem and need options, a format built around actions — Start Stop Continue, DAKI or Starfish — will get you there faster.

The columns explained

Mad

Things that made people angry: repeated interruptions, a build that broke for the fifth time, a decision reversed without explanation, a review that sat untouched for three days. Mad cards are the highest-signal column because anger is usually attached to something repeatable. Push for the event, not the adjective: "the deploy pipeline failed on Thursday and nobody owned it" is workable, "the pipeline is terrible" is not.

Sad

Things that were disappointing rather than infuriating: a feature cut at the last minute, a colleague leaving, a demo nobody attended, an estimate that turned out to be fantasy. Sad cards often point at expectations that were never made explicit, which makes them the most useful column for uncovering unspoken assumptions inside the team.

Glad

Things that went well and made people happy: a painful migration that finally landed, help that arrived unprompted, a quiet week that let someone finish deep work. This column is not a courtesy round. It tells you what to protect — the practices in the Glad column are the ones that quietly disappear when the team gets busy.

Example board

A seven-person team ran Mad Sad Glad after a sprint in which two people were pulled onto an urgent customer escalation.

The discussion did not stay on the escalation. Two Mad cards and one Sad card all pointed at the same thing: when priorities change mid-sprint, nobody announces it. That became the single action item — any mid-sprint change of the sprint goal gets posted in the team channel by whoever makes it, same day.

Timing for a team of 5–10

Facilitator prompts

• Mad: "What made you swear at your screen this sprint?" — "What did we do more than once that we should not have done at all?"
• Mad: "What blocked you for longer than half a day?"
• Sad: "What did you expect to happen that did not?" — "What did we lose this sprint that nobody mentioned?"
• Sad: "What did you plan to do and never got to?"
• Glad: "What went so well you would want it to happen again next sprint?" — "Who helped you, and how?"
• On any card: "What happened right before that?" This turns a feeling into a chain of events, which is the only version you can act on.

Common mistakes

• Letting Mad become a list of names. Redirect to the event and the system around it. "The review sat for three days" is a process fact; "Alex is slow" is an accusation and ends the conversation.
• Skipping Glad because time ran out. The Glad column is where you learn what to defend. Teams that always cut it end up losing the practices that were working.
• Accepting adjectives as cards. "Frustrating sprint" cannot be acted on. Ask for the specific moment.
• Discussing every card. Ten people produce thirty cards. Group them, vote, and take the top two or three — the rest are recorded, not debated.
• Ending without owners. An action item with no name attached is a wish. One owner per item, even when several people will do the work.
• Running it every sprint forever. Emotional formats lose their edge with repetition. Alternate with an action-shaped format such as Starfish or DAKI.

How to run Mad Sad Glad in QRetro

1. Create a board from the Mad Sad Glad template — the three columns are ready.
2. Share the link; participants join in the browser without creating an account.
3. Set a timer for eight minutes and let everyone write in silence, with cards hidden.
4. Reveal the board, read every card, and group duplicates into themes.
5. Give each person three votes and sort the columns by score.
6. Discuss the top themes and turn the outcome into action items with an owner and a due date.