Sprint retrospectives are the most discussed form of retrospectives in Scrum. You can however the same self-analysis and continuous improvement technique to other items of Agile project management. In this article, Madhavi Ledalla discusses release retrospectives.
A release is a group of many Scrums sprints that provides a set of features that can be deployed for the customer. The release retrospective provides an opportunity to inspect and adapt the release cycle. The article discusses the participants and the format of these meetings. It also provides a list of common inspection points for a release retrospective. Here are some examples:
Number of escaped defects
* Planned features versus delivered features
* The number of features developed that were really accepted
* Whether we delivered all the scope planned for the release
* The number of defects getting generated on previous enhancements
* Whether we are taking interim customer feedback
Finally, the article mentions three advantages of release retrospectives:
1. Get a high-level overview of the big picture
2. Evaluate the release and come up with a high-level look-ahead plan for the next release.
3. Evaluate the release with regard to the key focus areas and come up with a strategy for the next release.
Read the complete article on https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/september/the-significance-of-release-retrospectives