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| Criterion |  Agile Mad Sad Glad |  Agile Starfish Retrospective |  Facilitation Alignment Mapping |  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. | 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 several people work toward one goal but hold different mental maps, Alignment Mapping makes the discrepancies visible. It arranges goals, assumptions, and priorities so shared direction becomes verifiable. | 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 | Low | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 30-60 min | 45-90 min | 1-2 h | 45–75 min |
Participantsdifferent | 3-10 | 4-12 | 4-12 | Team members involved |
Formatsame | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Emotion Board, Themes, Action Items | Starfish Board, Practice Changes, Experiments | Alignment Map, Open Issues, Decision Questions | 4Ls Board, Learning Themes, Improvement Actions |
Tagsno overlap | RetrospectiveTeamReflection | RetrospectiveImprovementExperimentsTeam | AlignmentStakeholdersStrategyFacilitation | RetrospectiveLearningReflectionTeam |