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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Great course that makes you think.
Seok Woo JToronto
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
Instructor was extremely well prepared, know the material inside and out. Always had a good response for every question. And had a great sense of humor
Christian BPrivate Client
Mark is an amazing and experienced Agile Coach. He is detail oriented and helps to answer any questions very well.
Rishi VMontreal
Mark's knowledge and real world examples have cleared up my knowledge of scrum, the roles and responsibilities of the scrum team, and what I need to implement in my organization.
Greg MEdmonton
Great facilitator. Kept interest with activities and exercises.
Lynn MOttawa
Mark is fantastic at keeping the material interested. You can tell he is passionate on the topic and knows his stuff.
Jackie MEdmonton
Great flow and preparation. Really knows his stuff and transfer of knowledge is good.
Sonia MMontreal
Awesome and objective! Careful not to influence how we work by answering other students.
Shawn MMontreal
Excellent, great management of large group, Excellent information
Susan LPrivate Client
Mark has been a great facilitator, instructor, and extremely knowledgeable on teaching Scrum. Great analogies and references cited.
Wilfred MPrivate Client
Mark has an effective approach at coaching us through the course in an "agile" way. Would recommend the course to those who are experienced scrum masters and especially to those who are new to the agile world.
Caia RToronto
I cannot say anything but good things about the course, and have been telling many people in my org about it.
Hatem NVirtual
Great facilitation techniques often used as a regular classroom teacher (i.e. rephrasing, simplificaion, observing, hinting, investigative learning).
Mike PMontreal
Very knowledgable and lots of references. Puts things into context and gives lots of examples to relate to many businesses.
Brent MEdmonton
Great course. Information overload but not in a bad way. I liked that we discussed specific corporate problems people were having. Helped build context in how others are using Agile/Scrum. Maybe misusing, too.
Tyler BVancouver
Great course Mark! I really enjoyed learning more about the framwork and listening to others point of view.
Sarah MToronto
Another excellent course! Great balance of theory, exercises, and anecdotes.
Adam BOttawa
Excellent instructor. Left lots of room for us to think by ourselves. Great!
Kathleen LVancouver
Mark is super knowledgable on the topic and presents it in a fun and educational atmosphere. Really enjoyed the team work and Mark's perspective on a lot of the information.
Shelly MToronto
Course was excellent, wealth of information. Mark is very knowledgable, pace was good, clear and concise, appreciated his sense of humour.
Kevin PEdmonton
I recommend all newbees and Agile to take Mark's class. End of the day, you will walk out with confidence.
Hema PKitchener-Waterloo
Mark was very engaging, and his training session helped to increase my knowledge of Agile and Scrum.
Tiffany MToronto
Instructor was amazing, easy to listen to and follow. Did not read from book and provided concrete examples.
Tricia AOttawa
Awesome instructor with a sense of humor. Well read and fun!
Wendy AVancouver
Interaction was great, content is very useful and can be applied to improve our way right way. Nice control of the group by the instructor.
Ana BMontreal
Mark was very personable and knowledgeable about the subject. Nothing threw him.
Sharon GPrivate Client
Mark was incredibly knowledge and experienced and it's very apparent. I learned more than I could have expected. I greatly appreciate all the additional reading materials. I would have never been able to collect such a library on my own and I have a fascination for good leadership and developing high performing teams.
Anly HOttawa
Excellent instructor providing clear explanations. The course structure is flawless.
Benoit NMontreal
Very informative, with humour. Easy to understand for non-technical folks.
Tetyana OOttawa
It was a great experience coming to Agile Scrum just a few months ago allowed this to solidify a lot of things I've been practicing. I will likely immediately reap the rewards.
Curtis BOttawa
This course was a real eye opener and hope it will not be like preaching in the desert. You are a great orator and would love to listen to your thoughts for hours.
Marc-Andre LMontreal
Mark is Great! I took a CSM course from him 11 years ago, hence I picked this course again 11 years later.
Justin LVirtual
Excellent instructor provided engaging activites to help roleplay learning and provoke meaningful discussions.
Alice PEdmonton
Excellent instructor!!! Expert in Agile/Scrum.
Marc BOttawa
Very knowledgeable and pleasant to work with.
Kristian BEdmonton
Mark did a great job. I appreciated that a) he was coming from a strong development background and b) had an obvious passion about Scrum and the benefits it could bring to development.
Adam MVirtual
Mark is insightful, a pleasure to listen to, and inspires me toward making the changes needed so that I can work out a high-performance team.
Mike SVancouver
Mark was a great instructor. He was highly motivated, engaging, and kept us interested for the two days. Highly recommend others to take this course with Mark!
Prashanth MToronto
Very informative and up to my expectations. I loved the availability of the instructor.
Nicolas RMontreal
Very patient. Really liked the group activity where we had to work in Sprints on user stories.
Anita AVirtual
Brilliantly said. I am happy to be part of this Scrum Product owner course.
Esva PMontreal
Very knowledgeable instructor about scrum and software development in general.
Elizabeth GOttawa
Passionate and knowledgeable!
Derek LVancouver
Mark is very knowledgable. He provided interesting background on errors/mistakes committed by Scrum teams.
Prabh SToronto
Mark is very well read, with lots of breadth. Mark helped to challenge participants' ways of thinking that could impede scrum implementation.
Louise BOttawa
Mark was a great instructor with the curse of knowledge (in a good way). Detailed examples, solid application advice, and adaptable during the course. Thanks!
Nick GToronto
Lively, hands on, enlightening. Would recommend.
Allen NEdmonton
Mark is very engaging and keeps things interesting during the course.
Adam MToronto
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

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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Our active Scrum community forum is a safe place to ask questions. Long after you earn the Certified Scrum Master certification, you will have access to the forum, course materials, and additional valuable resources.