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| Criterion | ![]() Team Design Team Cognitive Load Assessment | ![]() Agile Mad Sad Glad | ![]() Agile Sprint Retrospective | ![]() Agile Starfish Retrospective |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When a team juggles too many domains, systems, or handoffs, it measures mental overload as an organizational problem. It clarifies responsibility, interaction, and load between teams. The result is captured as a cognitive-load profile and action list. | 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 a sprint is over and friction shouldn't simply be carried forward, it opens the view onto collaboration and patterns. It creates space to see causes and changes together. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 60-90 min | 30-60 min | Up to 3 hours for a one-month Sprint; shorter Sprints are usually shorter | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 3-12 | 3-10 | Scrum Team | 4-12 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Cognitive Load Profile, Action List | Emotion Board, Themes, Action Items | Improvement actions, Team agreements | Starfish Board, Practice Changes, Experiments |
Tagsno overlap | TeamComplexityImprovementDiagnosis | RetrospectiveTeamReflection | RetrospectiveImprovementLearning | RetrospectiveImprovementExperimentsTeam |



