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| Criterion | ![]() Agile Mad Sad Glad | ![]() Systems Thinking CATWOE Analysis | ![]() Agile Starfish Retrospective | ![]() Agile 4Ls Retrospective |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When a team's or workshop's mood needs to become readable, it structures emotional signals with little setup. It makes strain, relief, and sources of energy tangible. | CATWOE structures a problem from six viewpoints and prevents too narrow a view of the situation. Different experiences of the system become comparably discussable this way. | When improvement options need to be sorted more finely than just start and stop, it brings observations into clear kinds of action. This makes visible what should be done more, less, newly, or continued. | When a sprint should not only be assessed but also learned from, it captures experience in clear learning categories. It records what worked, what's missing, and what should run differently next time. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 30-60 min | 45-90 min | 45-90 min | 45–75 min |
Participantsdifferent | 3-10 | 3-8 | 4-12 | Team members involved |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Emotion Board, Themes, Action Items | CATWOE Canvas, Root Definition, Stakeholder Perspectives, Constraints | Starfish Board, Practice Changes, Experiments | 4Ls Board, Learning Themes, Improvement Actions |
Tagsno overlap | RetrospectiveTeamReflection | Systems thinkingFramingStakeholders | RetrospectiveImprovementExperimentsTeam | RetrospectiveLearningReflectionTeam |



