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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Mark was awesome. Kept the session engaged.
Jyoti KVirtual
The positive focus on people and the team was excellent. Incorporating the scrum process in the actual training session is brilliant.
Michael JMontreal
This was an excellent training. I really valued how engaging Mark was as a facilitator, everyone had the space to contribute and ask questions, and I loved how interactive and applicable it was, especially for myself outside of the software industry. It was incredibly fun and I learned a lot - I feel ready to step into a Scrum Master role and am excited at how it can improve the value we offer to clients at my organization.
Sarah HVirtual
I thoroughly enjoyed Mark's presentation style and communication.
Joshua RVirtual
Mark is a great teacher. Funny, communicates his ideas well, very knowledgeable, - a great teacher! This was a good course!
Anthony DVirtual
Mark taught the course in-depth; I gained a lot of knowledge on facilitating a scrum team in achieving its goals. Thanks a lot for such an amazing presentation format.
Be-Done IVirtual
Mark is very well prepared and understands his material in depth. He has a very logical way of looking at questions which can shift people’s understanding in a useful way. If you need to understand “pure” Scrum, this is a good course.
Paul AVirtual
It was a very good experience for me, I appreciate how much knowledge the instructor transferred to us in just 2 days.
Elena KOttawa
Mark was great at explaining processes to entry level product owners, and is definitely one of the most knowledgeable people in the field. I'd be definitely interested in more of his courses.
Blake KVirtual
Amazing course! Love every second of it. Mark kept us all engaged. I knew nothing about agile/scrum and now feel well equipped to make changes at work. I'd love for the rest of my team to attend.
Shravan COttawa
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 was great. Excellent sense of humor, great ability to adapt, wealth of business and sugject matter knowledge.
Jesse BPrivate Client
Lively, knowledgeable instructor who delivered the material creatively (no powerpoint! ) and made everyone comfortable.
Karen BOttawa
Mark is a very entertaining instructor. I feel I learned a great deal more than I could through reading/self study.
Michael HToronto
Thank you. It has been one of the most interesting courses I have attended.
Hemant KToronto
Very much appreciated the training material as it has direct implication in our project methodologies.
Mizan CMontreal
Great course! Very engaging and knowlegeable instructor.
Kolin BOttawa
Mark had great skills at sharing knowledge, breaking down concepts and explaining the "whys" of things.
Cedric LMontreal
Mark is a great presenter. I appreciate that he is to the point and succinct in his points, but can expand when prompted. I appreciate that there was room for "derailment" and that the training was made more custom tailored to the individual experiences of the scrum masters at our org. The subject matter was good. I think it contained a lot of the info that new scrum masters don't think about, and covered a lot of traps that they fall into.
Adel AVirtual
Great course that makes you think.
Seok Woo JToronto
Mark did an excellent job keeping the course dynamic and informative. I would have loved a few more days to really dig into some subjects.
Tim KPrivate Client
I learned a lot and the content was far more enganging than I expected it to be. I come away with many improvements I can make to my organization. Thanks and well done.
Dan CKitchener-Waterloo
This was agreat intro to formal scrum fundamentals. Mark was always engaging.
John LKitchener-Waterloo
Very good and useful information. I like the format (no boring Powerpoint) and doing the meeting as a sprint was great.
Fred BPrivate Client
Mark is an awesome instructor and he is very knowledgeable.
Samina CVirtual
Really appreciated how he addressed our questions and gave feedback. Mark was very knowledgable on the subject matter.
Kyle AOttawa
This course was a rapid-fire immersion into the world of scrum. As such, it provides a grounding for us to start on the journey to becoming a good scrummaster.
Steve HToronto
This course gave me a new insight into delivering better software for the customer more effectively.
Len CVancouver
Thank you Mark! Up until last week I knew nothing about Scrum and now I know quite a lot. Took my test this morning -- just as you said, it was not that complicated and panicking was not warranted. Excited to apply the new skills in practice!
Anastasia KVirtual
I had the best two days of practical training on Agile. Instructor has logical answers to my questions.
Angie EEdmonton
Excellent! A refreshing approach! I loved the style of delivering the material and the many discussions and short exercises.
Mark APrivate Client
Second course with Mark went great. I have to figure out how to afford more?
David HMontreal
Mark was an excellent instructor, with a sense of humour that helped keep my focus (which is particularly challenging with the course being online over 3 days). Being able to run through simulated sprints to help reinforce the material was very helpful.
Micheal CVirtual
Amazing instructor, was able to clearly explain complex concepts, made the course relevant and engaging! This will alow us to build strong agile teams.
Dylan HPrivate Client
Excellent material, entertaining instructor. Instructor distilled the information well. Both instructor and course provided a great intro to Scrum. The course was challenging yet rewarding.
Duff KOttawa
I found the instructor extremely engaging and very knowledgeable about the subject. The time flew by!
Granville GOttawa
Excellent course content delivered in a direct, practical and memorable fashion.
Kimberley KOttawa
Thanks for being so responsive and Agile in your approach to leading the class.
Deb BKitchener-Waterloo
Great instructor, knowledgeable, kept team engaged for two full days.
Nermin JToronto
Instructor is very knowledgeable and delivers the course extremely well. Makes it interesting!
Brian APrivate Client
Mark has been very important in teaching us the scrummaster role and scrum processes.
Maxime GMontreal
Well versed in knowledge and provided great "philosophical" thinking towards solutions to problems at work. Fun and approachable. Encourages solution formulation yourself.
Kang CKitchener-Waterloo
Long days but really challenged me to rethink how I can enhance my BA skills and how to contribute in different ways to my team.
Pearline EVancouver
There is so much about Scrum that I didn't know I didn't know! Thanks Mark for an informative and engaging 2 days.
Dan LKitchener-Waterloo
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
Mark is a very smart, passionate, knowledgable trainer, with a charismatic personality and great pedagogical skills. I see his potential to change companies culture. The course really taught me many things and made me want to read and know more!
Iulia AToronto
This course is valuable to anyone who would like to be introduced to Scrum. It was a well spended 2 day course and was very helpful. Mark is very knowledgeable and a very good coach.
Ronald HOttawa
Going into this training course my expectation was between boring and somewhat engaging as per my previous experience with training. I was pleasantly surprised. I found Mark entertaining and the course material laid out in a way as to keep the class engaged and interactive at all times. Well done. Will not hesitate to recommend your class(es) to anyone.
Jean-Michel HOttawa
Mark is super knowledgeable and engaging. 10/10. Would recommend.
Steve BPrivate Client
Mark is engaging, very knowledgeable and morphs to the class knowledge. His sense of humor is also appreciated.
Malisha CToronto

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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