Release Retrospective Considerations

I like to schedule an 'as needed' Release retrospective with my teams for them to inspect the release from a holistic, big picture point of view. It's essential to pause from the nitty gritty of everyday coding/testing so they can review the release process and course correct/pivot if necessary.

The list below includes some questions that I ask the team to mull over, so they can pinpoint, assess and identify improvements.

Questions to consider: 

• What were the major milestones in this release? 
• Who were all the team members/roles, stakeholders, influencers? When did they join/leave?
• What worked well in this release?
• What were some “Ah Ha” moments?
• What was frustrating for us?
• What were our major distractions?
• What do we still not understand?
• How well do you think we did?
• What practices do we want to keep or do again?
• What can we throw away / what’s not working?
• What are our ongoing problems?
• What problems can we fix or escalate?
• What 2 or 3 new things would we like to try?
• What is our action plan for instituting these recommendations?

To save the team time and to allow for some serious juicy conversation, I will forward this list of considerations a few days ahead of time.