Retrospective

The retrospective is an important part of the release process where we give every member of the community the chance to give feedback about their experience, what went well and what did not.

After the release

1. Set a date and time one week after the release date. This is still early enough, so people will remember things about the release, but late enough, so they will have had time to reflect. An hour is usually sufficient for this.

   Make sure the time slot works for people from the EU and US, where most of the current contributors reside.

2. Plan a venue. We usually rely on Jitsi Meet for conversations that include audio/video as well as screensharing.

3. Create the invitation post over on the Discourse. Examples:

   • NixOS 22.11 Retrospective
   • 22.05 Retrospective
   • 21.11 Retrospective

During the retrospective

1. Provide a collaborative document, that participants can edit. It should allow adding and classifying discussion items. In recent retrospectives we classified things as good/neutral/bad.

   Examples:

   • 22.11 Retrospective

2. Put up limits for how long a single discussion point can take place, so every topic can be addressed.

3. Identify action items from the discussion points and identify people who would want to follow up on those.

After the retrospective

1. Post the conclusions onto the Discourse thread. Also link the notes that were made during the event.

2. Follow up on assigned action items.