Websites/Processes/Retrospectives/Release

DRAFT: Release Retrospective Agenda Template

We should be doing post-mortems (ahem, I mean retrospectives) for all Mozilla projects. The purpose is to learn from our mistakes and improve our processes, as well as acknowledge and celebrate our successes.

We’ll try to contain retrospectives to one hour. Here’s an outline to help facilitate the meeting. Open communication is the goal. Finger pointing isn’t. When scheduling a retrospective, copy the below agenda into the meeting invite or send via email.

Title:

Retrospective Agenda for Mozilla Project {Website Name}
 

Body:

You're invited to participate in a release retrospective for {Website Name}. Let's discuss the nitty gritty in a constructive
way (no finger pointing!) and help make future projects run more smoothly.

To get a comprehensive review of all aspects of the project lifecycle, topics are broken down by phase and/or stakeholder. 
For each item below we will discuss “what went well” and “what can be improved” as well as the specific questions pertaining 
to each item.

Intro
* (Re)introduce the team
* Provide general overview and recap of the project.

Planning
* Were there clear requirements and a solid understanding of the website from the start?
* Were goals and success metrics clearly defined?

Design
* Were there sufficient user stories?

Resources
* Were roles / responsibilities clear?
* Were there sufficient resources to execute all phases smoothly within the project scope and schedule?    

Schedule
* Was the schedule realistic?
* Did anything cause the schedule to slip?

Development
* Was code freeze respected?

QA testing
* Did development adhere to QA’s checklist?

IT / Deployment
* Were there any issues getting the app onto stage?
* How did launch go?

Security
* Were there any issues in the security review process?

L10N
* Were there any issues in the localization process?
* Was string freeze respected?

Communication
* Were the channels of communication between all the stakeholders established from the start?
* Was there anything that blocked or hindered communication?

Summary

Action items