Why Retro Format Actually Matters
It's tempting to think a retrospective is a retrospective — get the team in a room (or a call), ask what went well, write it down, move on. But the format you choose shapes what people actually say. A format that's too process-focused can miss real emotional signal on a burned-out team; a format that's too emotion-focused can feel indulgent on a team that just needs a tighter process fix.
Start / Stop / Continue
This is the workhorse format for a reason. It's process-oriented and forces concrete framing:
- Start — what should we begin doing that we aren't yet?
- Stop — what's not working and should be cut?
- Continue — what's working and worth protecting?
It's ideal for teams in steady-state delivery mode who want actionable process tweaks without a lot of ceremony. The framing naturally produces things that translate directly into Action Items.
Mad / Sad / Glad
This format is emotion-first:
- Mad — what frustrated you this sprint?
- Sad — what disappointed you or felt like a missed opportunity?
- Glad — what made you happy or proud?
It surfaces morale and team-health signals that Start/Stop/Continue can miss entirely — the frustration that's been quietly building for three sprints, or the small win nobody said out loud. It's especially useful after a rough sprint, a layoff, a reorg, or any period where the team's emotional state matters as much as the process.
How to Pick
A rough rule of thumb: use Start/Stop/Continue for routine sprint retros when the team is stable and you mostly need process tuning. Reach for Mad/Sad/Glad when something outside the normal sprint cadence happened — a hard release, a team change, a stretch of overtime — and you need to surface how people actually feel before you can fix anything.
The Part Everyone Skips: Action Items
The single biggest failure mode of retros isn't picking the wrong format — it's generating a long list of Stop/Continue or Mad/Sad items and then never turning any of it into action. A retro that doesn't produce at least one or two concrete, owned action items is basically a venting session. Whatever format you use, always close with an explicit "what are we actually going to do differently" step, written down separately from the raw input.
Keeping a History
Retros compound in value when you can look back. If "communication with the design team" showed up as a Stop item three sprints running, that's a much stronger signal than seeing it once — but only if someone actually kept the old retros somewhere searchable instead of buried in a chat thread from six weeks ago.
Bottom Line
Both formats work. What matters more is running the retro consistently, forcing every session to end with real action items, and keeping a record so patterns across sprints become visible instead of forgotten.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. The format toggle is per retro, not a fixed setting — you can run a Start/Stop/Continue retro this sprint and a Mad/Sad/Glad retro next sprint, and both get saved separately to your history.
Either works. You can add items one at a time as people call them out live, or collect input separately (in chat, a shared doc, etc.) and paste it in as a list using the "paste a list instead" option under each column.
Yes — the Team Retrospective Generator supports both Start/Stop/Continue and Mad/Sad/Glad formats, generates a clean summary with a dedicated Action Items section, and saves every retro to a local history log. It's a one-time $6.49 purchase — no subscription, no account required.
Every generated retro is saved locally in your browser (via localStorage), organized by date, so you can come back and review or reload any past retro at any time.
Yes — click "Copy Summary to Clipboard" and paste the formatted summary anywhere: a shared doc, a chat channel, or an email to the team.