Templates · Essentials

Good, Bad, Learned, Learning

Reviews the sprint and follows each person's learning goals from one sprint to the next.

What it is

Two columns review the sprint: what went well, what did not. Two treat learning as a personal goal: what did I want to learn and did I, what do I want to learn next. The fourth column of one retrospective feeds the third column of the following one.

Goal

Learning becomes part of the work. Each person states a goal and what they need for it, the team sees it and can help, and the goal is looked at again a sprint later.

When to use it

• In teams where growing skills is an explicit aim: junior members, a new technology, newcomers.
• Over several sprints in a row: the format pays off through repetition.
• When learning is always pushed back by delivery.

When to pick another format

If the team has no interest in personal goals, the last two columns stay thin: Original 4 collects lessons without asking for goals. When a sprint leaves urgent problems, give them the whole session with Went well, To improve, Action ideas.

How to run it

1. What went well? Ask for successes worth repeating on purpose.
2. What didn’t go so well? Ask what went wrong or cost the team time.
3. What did I want to learn this sprint, and did I? Ask each person for the learning goal they had set and how it went. The first time, nobody has a goal on record: let people write what they had hoped to learn.
4. What do I want to learn next sprint? Ask for a goal and for what the person needs to reach it.

Group, vote and discuss the second column, and agree on actions with an owner and a date. The two learning columns need no vote. For each goal of the last column, ask what would help: time set aside, a colleague to pair with, a piece of work to practise on. Those are actions too. Open the next retrospective by reading these goals again.

Columns

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