The Guide to Effective Agile Retrospectives

If you’re tired of having retrospective meetings greeted with groans and heavy, reluctant sighs or feeling like you’re rehashing the same old problems with no signs of improvement, the advice Mark shares with you will help make your retrospectives more effective.

There’s no need to have retrospectives that people hate and aren’t even useful – with a few tweaks, you can have meetings your team will look forward to, and start seeing real improvements and results!

Includes follow-up support emails to reinforce what you learned and help you make real changes right away.

Why This Book?

Our world is changing at a faster rate than ever, and the speed will only increase. Covid-19 gave us a taste of how vital it is to be able to quickly adjust. Scrum helps break change into manageable chunks and then gives us focus, with retrospectives as a critical tool in that arsenal for rapid adaptation. It’s worth learning how to use them properly.

In The Guide to Effective Agile Retrospectives, Mark shares his secrets to creating retrospectives that don’t suck!

You’ll learn about:

● Common misunderstandings about retrospectives – let’s clear those up

● Recommended techniques and activities to keep the meeting fun and engaging

● How to run retrospectives with distributed teams

● Why you need data for your retrospectives – what to gather, not gather, and what it can tell you

● Turning vague ideas like “We need to do better Unit Testing” into concrete experiments

● …and how to help these improvements actually happen

● Remedies for anti-patterns like: “All Talk, No Action”, “Perennial Problems”, and “ScrumMaster Hero”

Why this book? Because Mark was failing at Sprint Retrospectives before it was popular. After years of study and experimentation, his findings are now collected in this Guide so you don’t have to have to suffer the same pain.

Hint: This free eBook, and the accompanying email series, qualify for Scrum Alliance Education Units (SEUs).

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The instructor was very knowledgeable and kept me interested in the content by applying real life scenarios.
Jennifer MPrivate Client
Mark delivered an excellent course, it was a value-packed 2 days.
Brent COttawa
Terrific! Well thought out responses to questions. Great base of experience. Practical approach to teaching. 10/10
Edward LOttawa
Mark provides clarity into the mystical world of Agile and Scrum with practical examples and Jedi wisdom. Add some psychosocial games into the batch and your in for an adventure. Training will test not just your ability to obtain facts, but leave you pondering the cavernous opportunities for the scum master to be an agent of organizational change.
Petrus BVirtual
Mark did an awesome job. He is very knowledgable, helpful, and patient. I will recommend this course for sure.
Jamal EToronto
Knows course material well. Quick to answer all questions.
Michael BEdmonton
The course and exercise were well designed to add value compared to reading about Scrum. Mark is an effective presenter, keeping things interesting and (often) entertaining.
Gordon EPrivate Client
Mark was a great instructor. He made things really fun and engaging. It wasn't just a boring lecture to sit through for two days. It kept us engaged and we learned a lot. Thanks Mark!
Geeta BVirtual
The course was well organizated and presented but the real value comes in the form of the facilitator Mark. His knowledge, enthusiasm and ability to help you find our own answers was refreshing, Thank you Mark!
James BOttawa
Mark was great. Excellent sense of humor, great ability to adapt, wealth of business and sugject matter knowledge.
Jesse BPrivate Client
I find the instructor very knowledgeable and experienced in Scrum. He was very well organized and prepared for the course. He encouraged in class participation and elevated course content with real life examples. Well played! The course, its content and material covered Scrum very well.
Alena CVancouver
I enjoyed Mark's personality and vast knowledge he provided.
Adrian CToronto
Mark was great !! Very thorough - his passion for what he does came through. I appreciated his organization and engagement with the team. He was awesome.
Rene EVirtual
Overall very well structured course. It helped me see the benefits of Scrum and learned how to apply it.
Nazir EOttawa
The ScrumMaster training as facilitated by Mark Levison was an invaluable experience in my both by personal and professional growth. Mark's instruction kept me engaged and entertained with materials for the duration of the 2 day seminar. I will highly recommend this course to anyone interested in exploring Agile within their places of work.
Mike EVirtual
Great. Very detailed. Class very interesting, very good relating questions with good examples.
Yong FToronto
Love it. I'm a repeat offender and have recommended you multiple times.
Alex GMontreal
This was a great course with an engaging instructor - well worth the time of anyone who wants to learn more about product ownership.
Mark BVirtual
Mark is very well read, with lots of breadth. Mark helped to challenge participants' ways of thinking that could impede scrum implementation.
Louise BOttawa
It was an excellent seminar. It gave us hands-on exercises. I can see lots of challenges ahead as I try to implement changes to our scrum team. Should be fun and interesting journey!
Ann Margaret GMontreal
Hands on experience in the subject helps to communicate most of the inportant message throughout the course.
Wael FToronto
Mark was a great instructor. His quirky ways and sense of humour make for a great course. I was entertained and interested each step of the way.
Philippe BPrivate Client
Mark is great and explained dry terms with examples.
Xueyan BPrivate Client
Mark did a great job of purposefully making us all feel included and engaged with his class. He added great clarity to the budding scrum process that has taken over in my workplace. I have seen many versions and perspectives on scrum values that deviate and distort how scrum would work, but I am now confident I can facilitate with my projects and team, using a much clearer scrum.
Charlene FVirtual
Great training. Good energy throughout the workshop. Well facilitated. I liked the regular breaks. Good combination of both breakout room exercises and whole group learnings. Good use of technology for a virtual workshop.
Carole GVirtual
This was a great course that I will recomment to others! A lot to cover in a short period of time, and I managed to understand most if not all material. I'm excited to take my learnings with me and apply to my role at my company!
Lesleanne BToronto
I think Mark is extremely flexible and accommodating to the needs of the group. Thank you Mark, your 4 days with us were amazing and helpful.
Andrea KPrivate Client
Great Class! Learning in a dynamic and fun way with interesting and useful context and examples.
Suzelle FMontreal
No nonsense, practical approach, dynamic, very instructive.
Yanick BMontreal
The CSM course rocks! If you want to immediately jump into the action and improve as you go, this is it. You'll start off as a group of strangers, and find out how quickly you can build a high-performance team. And, if you separately want to read every comprehensive detail there is to know about scrum, Mark will share that with you too.
Nicole BVirtual
Lots of good information and exercises for a two day course. Instructor was clear and engaging in presenting concepts.
Marvin EPrivate Client
Mark did a great job of making the course informative and engaging. The continued participation by everyone else made it a lot more interesting.
Gordon WOttawa
This training is beneficial, now it is clear to me what sprint goals, sprint reviews and all the other terms mean and how they can be used to inform, interact and engage team members, and how to help teams become more effective and high performing. I appreciate your speech and examples you provided in class, it helps me better understand the topics. Overall, this is a great and positive training. Thanks Mark!
Alice CVirtual
Very good instructor, very knowledgeable, good facilitator.
Liz SToronto
Added some very interesting info as well as presented the material very well clearly.
Yvonne REdmonton
Very much appreciated the training material as it has direct implication in our project methodologies.
Mizan CMontreal
Mark is quite knowledgable about the subject. A good collaborative style was used so I can learn everyone's views and share what I could gather.
Sriprasadh ROttawa
I liked Mark. I think he answered all the questions really well and engaged the group in very good discussion. The prep work was very helpful and I do not feel like I missed out on anything because it was virtual. It was well organized!
Raji RVirtual
Great seminar, very helpful and Mark showed us in real time examples the application of Scrum.
Pierre EMontreal
Mark is one of the most interesting humans I’ve had the pleasure to meet. As a student, I can tell he genuinely has our interest and development in mind when creating and delivering his workshops. I can’t say enough good things about the practical knowledge I’ve gained taking this training.
Michael RVirtual
Passionate and enthusiastic instructor, excellent course and materials.
Don CVancouver
Very knowledgeable teacher with tons of examples and real life stories.
Alex BMontreal
I found Mark to be engaging, informative and entertaining. His answers to class questions were well thought out, practical and helpful. He did a very good job handling the various personalities and keeping things on track.
Brad GVirtual
He's very knowledgable and good communication. He was able to answer any question given with complete satification
Po HPrivate Client
Great to get this training from the subject matter expert.
Nisha AToronto
Great instructor, very satisfied, will recomment! I brought my whole team with me, happy I did.
Joshua COttawa
Instructor was great, would continue the engaging exercises and involving people in the room.
Hussein RToronto
Mark is an awesome instructor! The course was very valuable and useful.
Chandni LToronto
Instructor was engaged, interesting, and fun. He included all members in discussion and Q/A. The course provided me with what I need to start effectively using scrum at work.
Erik CEdmonton
Mark was a very knowledgeable instructor and very passionate about the material. For a brand new subject area, I was very content and feeling comfortable in training (which usually is not the normal case). Whatever little pre-knowledge I had, this was a very great course. I took my own notes by hand and will strive the use the material as much as possible where I can. I did all of the pre-work and it definitely helped. Thank you for the training !
Brian BVirtual

Your Guide to Everything Scrum

Mark Levison spent 12 years as a ScrumMaster and Coach, helping teams by chance before he started to systemize it. Armed with an insatiable love for research, he has been studying and teaching Agile since 2001, introducing Scrum, Lean, and Agile methodology to a broad range of individuals and organizations. Mark has helped launch Scrum practice throughout Canada including Government of Canada departments, major financial and insurance institutions, healthcare agencies, and leading payroll, HR services, and software companies.

Students and communities benefit from Mark’s more than thirty years of experience in the IT industry and over two decades of Scrum and Agile expertise, as he brings his uniquely fun and effective teaching style to thousands of individuals and teams so they can be more effective.

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Focuses on the role of the team and the ScrumMaster. Get the skills and practical experience necessary to improve teamwork, take the exam, and advance your career with a certification that is in high demand today. Often the best fit for anyone new to Scrum.

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Relatable Scenarios

Learn on-the-job applications of key Scrum concepts, skills, principles, along with practical solutions that you can apply the next day for difficult, real-life situations.

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Everything you need to earn your Scrum Alliance® ScrumMaster certification, including exam fee and membership, and so much more.

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With focus on the challenges that real teams face, and tools to dig deeper. You don’t need more boring Scrum theory. You need something you can sink your teeth into to see immediate results.

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Use Scrum knowledge to standout at work, get paid more, and impress your customer, all without burning out.

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