🦃🚀 Thanksgiving Release Feast
Gather around the turkey table of code, celebrate the successful deployments, dissect the burnt bits, and plan a feast of smoother releases next year!
Template Columns
🥧 Successful Servings
Highlight the tasty successes and smooth rollouts that made our Thanksgiving deployment delicious.
Base column: What Went Well🔥 Burnt Bites
Identify the glitches and hiccups that left a bitter taste in our deployment feast.
Base column: What Went Wrong🍂 Harvest Improvements
Plan new recipes and tools to ensure future deployments are crisp and well‑cooked.
Base column: What We Want to ImproveAbout this template
A festive, release‑focused retrospective that celebrates successes, surfaces deployment hiccups, and creates actionable improvements for future releases.
When to use this template
Use after a major release or sprint that coincides with a holiday or milestone, when the team wants both celebration and constructive analysis.
How to facilitate
Begin with a brief welcome, set the festive tone, and explain the three columns: Successful Servings, Burnt Bites, and Harvest Improvements.
Ask each participant to add sticky notes to Successful Servings, focusing on smooth rollouts, automated tests, or any win they’re proud of.
Shift to Burnt Bites, encouraging honest sharing of glitches, missed checks, or deployment delays, and cluster similar items.
Move to Harvest Improvements, have the team brainstorm concrete actions, tools, or process tweaks that would prevent the burnt bites next time.
Facilitate a quick dot‑vote on the most critical improvement ideas, then assign owners and due dates to the top three.
Summarize the agreed actions, thank the team for their contributions, and close with a lighthearted Thanksgiving toast or virtual high‑five.
Pro Tips
Use themed emojis on the virtual board to keep energy high and reinforce the Thanksgiving vibe.
Limit each Burnt Bite to a single root cause to avoid analysis paralysis.
Allocate a 2‑minute timer per participant when sharing successes to keep the session focused.
Capture action items directly in your project tracker during the vote to ensure follow‑through.
FAQ
What if the team is hesitant to share failures?
Normalize the discussion by starting with your own ‘burnt bite’ and emphasize that the goal is learning, not blame; using anonymous sticky notes can also lower resistance.
How much time should we allocate to each column?
Aim for roughly 10 minutes on Successful Servings, 15 minutes on Burnt Bites, and 15–20 minutes on Harvest Improvements, adjusting based on the number of items.
Can this format be used for non‑release retrospectives?
Yes, the festive framing works for any project milestone; simply rename the columns to match the context while keeping the celebration‑improvement balance.
Want a custom template?
Create a retrospective template tailored to your team's needs with our AI-powered generator
At a glance
- Duration
45–60 min
- Team Size
5-12 people
- Columns
3 columns
- Base Format
What Went Well, What Went Wrong, What We Want to Improve
Tags
Ready to get started?
Use this template to run your next retrospective