Templates · Essentials

Good, Bad, Better, Best

Reviews the sprint, looks for improvements and ends by naming the outstanding work and the people behind it.

What it is

Four columns that climb: good, bad, better, best. The first two review the sprint. Better collects improvement opportunities. Best is reserved for what stood out: outstanding results, performances, actions and people.

Goal

Improvement actions, and an explicit record of the best of the sprint, so that excellent work is named, understood and can happen again.

When to use it

• At the end of a successful sprint or release, to learn from what went right.
• When the team’s retrospectives dwell on problems.
• When individual contributions go unnoticed.

When to pick another format

After a sprint that went badly, a column for the best can ring hollow: Mad, Sad, Glad or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly fit better. If thanking each other is the main purpose, Kudos opens with it.

How to run it

Before the writing, say how Good and Best differ: the first is what met expectations, the second what went beyond them.

1. Good: ask what went well.
2. Bad: ask what went poorly.
3. Better: ask for improvement opportunities. A card may answer a problem of the previous column, or make something good better still.
4. Best: ask for outstanding results, performances, actions and people. Names are welcome, with what the person did.

Open the discussion with Best, and for each card ask what made it possible. The answer is often a practice worth making routine, and that is an action. Then group and vote on Bad and Better, read them side by side, and agree on the improvements to carry out, each with an owner and a date.

Columns

To start a retrospective from this template, see Create a retro.