Example data. Fieldnote is a fictional company used to fill all 61 boards, so the examples tell one consistent story.
Fieldnote, both squads together, two weeks after the Pennylane integration launch: what the launch taught them.
What the team took away
The status screen moves to the top of the Integrations backlog; the Sunday connection pattern changes the on-call rota for launches.
How to run it
Preparation
The team that shipped the release or lived the incident. Include whoever was on call, even if they are not in the team.
Send a one-paragraph reminder of the period covered: dates, what was released, what went wrong if anything.
Four columns: Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for. Put a one-line definition under each header; Lacked and Longed for get confused.
Agenda
5 min
Frame the period Say what the retro covers and what it does not. Point at the four headers and read the definitions: Lacked is what was missing, Longed for is what we wish existed.
10 min
Silent writing Each person fills all four columns in silence. Push for at least one Learned per person: that column is the point of this format.
15 min
Learned first Read the Learned column first, before anything else. Each learning gets a question: where do we write this down so the next team finds it?
15 min
Lacked and Longed for Read both columns. Cluster. Vote with two dots each on the clusters that would have changed the outcome.
15 min
Actions and Liked Turn the top two clusters into actions with owners. Finish by reading Liked aloud, quickly, so people leave on it.
Pitfalls
Do not read the columns left to right. If you start with Liked, the energy is gone by Lacked.
Do not accept a Learned that is a complaint in disguise. 'We learned the API is slow' is a Lacked. A Learned changes what you do next time.
Do not let Longed for become a wish list for management. Filter it: what could the team itself build or ask for this quarter?
Afterwards
Learnings go into the team wiki or the onboarding doc, not the retro board. Actions open the next retro. After an incident, pair this with a blameless post-mortem for the timeline and root causes.