Plastic effects during sheet metal forming can lead to undesirable distortions in formed components. Here, the three-stage work hardening and plastic strain recovery ("springback") in a cold-rolled, alpha-phase commercially pure titanium is examined. Interrupted standard tensile tests with in situ x-ray diffraction and quasi-in situ electron backscatter diffraction show that twinning plays a minor role in both of these phenomena. The experiments give evidence that the observed work hardening plateau is the result of an abrupt activation and multiplication of (c + a) slip and a subsequent redistribution of load between grain families. The springback can be attributed to inelastic backwards motion and annihilation of dislocations, driven by backstresses from dislocation-based hardening during loading. The peak broadening behavior, observed by x-ray diffraction, suggests that the internal stress state is highest in the rolling direction, resulting in consistently higher springback magnitude along this direction. (C) 2019 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd.