4Ls (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed For)
A four-column retro for milestones, not sprints.
Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed For. Slower than Start/Stop/Continue, and aimed at understanding rather than action. Use it when the team needs to make sense of something, not fix it.
When to use
End of a project, end of a quarter, after a release that didn't go to plan. Anything where the right outcome is lessons, not next-sprint commitments. If the team is reaching for action items inside ten minutes, you've picked the wrong format — switch to SSC.
How it runs
Four columns
Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed For. The order matters — Liked first lowers the temperature; Longed For last leaves people forward-looking.
Silent write
Eight minutes. More than SSC needs — these prompts take longer to answer honestly.
Cluster and read out
Group duplicates per column. Read each column out loud before moving to the next; don't let the discussion jump around.
Spend the time on Lacked
Liked is short. Learned is fast. Longed For is fun. The work is in Lacked — that's where the unsaid stuff lives. Plan to spend half the meeting there.
Why it works
Four prompts force breadth. Teams that run SSC for years still find new things in Learned and Lacked the first time they switch. Liked and Longed For act as bookends — they keep the conversation from turning into a list of complaints.
Variations
- Add a fifth column, Lessons, for the explicit takeaway. Useful when the output goes into a postmortem doc.
- Drop Liked if the team is in self-congratulation mode and you need to surface what's not working.
- Run it async-first over a week, then a 30-minute live discussion. Lower the cost, raise the depth.
Facilitator notes
Plan 45-60 minutes — it's a slower retro by design and you'll regret rushing it. If Lacked surfaces something the team doesn't have authority to fix, write it down, name the person who can, and move on. Don't let the retro become a complaint session about org structure.
Pitfalls
- Treating Liked as a victory lap. Two minutes, then move on.
- Skimming Lacked because it surfaces uncomfortable truths. The whole point is to surface them.
- Letting Longed For become a wishlist nobody will action. Tag each item with who owns it before you close the meeting.
Remote tips
Async board for the silent-write phase, 24-hour window before the call. The reflective columns benefit from time — people remember things on day two that they wouldn't surface in a live eight-minute slot.
Example outputs
- Liked: the call we made to delay the launch by a week.
- Lacked: anyone owning the integration test suite — three people thought somebody else had it.
- Longed For: a real staging environment that isn't shared with QA.
FAQ
- When should I run 4Ls instead of Start/Stop/Continue?
- Milestones over sprints. SSC for the weekly cadence; 4Ls for the end of something — a project, a quarter, a difficult release.
- Can I run 4Ls every sprint?
- You can, but you'll burn out the team. The format takes 45-60 minutes done well, and the depth doesn't reward weekly use. Run it quarterly, or after a milestone.