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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Well done. Good use of different activities and teaching styles to keep things interesting.
Orrie SToronto
Mark's session was a great combination of theory, practical exercises and real life stories that kept this learner engaged and involved. Time spent was definitely worthwhile. Thanks!
Justin LVirtual
He is a great listener, well spoken and gives great examples and explanations. Speaks slowly, makes sure everyone understands.
Maxime MMontreal
Great instructor - very clear and easy to follow. Makes you think.
Linda LOttawa
Very good presenter and knowledgeable.
Peter ZOttawa
The instructor was able to cram a staggering amount of learning into a very short amount of time in a very effective manner. I highly-recommend this training for any Scrum Product Owner or Scrum Dev Team member. The instructor was even able to effectively maintain the energy levels of the students throughout the 2-day course by taking sufficient breaks and by introducing sufficient novelty between modules to keep things interesting throughout.
Tyler TVirtual
Instructor has in-depth knowledge of subject. Always agreeable. Answers questions readily and with example.
Sylvie TMontreal
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
Mark clearly articulated the value of Scrum and Agile. He was able to distill to the appropriate level for the audience.
Dave VKitchener-Waterloo
Energetic. Applied scrum in practice by helping lead us to answers in many modules.
Laura LVancouver
Great instructor, great technique using Scrum to learn.
Jen MToronto
Did a great job getting the information across. Provided real-world examples and concrete solutions that were helpful. Q&A throughout added a lot.
Jacob DPrivate Client
First Class! Obvously experienced, but not in an arrogant way! Very patient and he spoke with a softer voice than the guy next door!
Nicholas VKitchener-Waterloo
Mark was engaging, knowledgeable, well-read and provided great examples.
Warren CVancouver
Very thorough and engaging. Flexibility and self-organization of the course was great.
Brendan SPrivate Client
Thank you. It has been one of the most interesting courses I have attended.
Hemant KToronto
The teaching methodologies used by the instructor complemented the material very well. The information packed session was delievered very well. It was a great course!
Swati TPrivate Client
Mark was a great instructor, really made the content easily understandable and great at answering questions.
Melanie MVirtual
Great course. Covers the essentials and deals with a lot of potential situations and ways to handle them. Mark had great room presence and was a great communicator.
Michael VEdmonton
I found the instructor extremely engaging and very knowledgeable about the subject. The time flew by!
Granville GOttawa
Excellent materials delivered nicely.
Zin RKitchener-Waterloo
Mark had a way of getting info across in both fun yet informative ways. He loves to challenge and be challenged which made it a pleasure.
Ross CPrivate Client
I enjoyed Mark's teaching style. I like the personal stories and puns. I always like to bring humor in to my meeting or when I am teaching or mentoring, it evokes a positive emotion and people will retain the information better. A+++ Would like to attend other courses done by Mark.
Shanna FVirtual
Mark was fantastic. Enjoyed his coaching very well. Course was very interesting.
Robert AOttawa
Great! Very enthuiastic instructor and made learning a breeze.
Dalbir SKitchener-Waterloo
Mark made the class enjoyable. I was initially dreading a 3 day course. After the first day I knew that I could live through the course.
Dickie BPrivate Client
No nonsense, practical approach, dynamic, very instructive.
Yanick BMontreal
I found Mark to be engaged, upbeat, and very knowledgeable.
Peter LPrivate Client
Excellent course overall, instructor was professional, knowledgeable, articulate, and sensitive to different needs among the students.
Alex VPrivate Client
You'll spend two great days with amazing people around and learn a lot while laughing. Take this course!
Stephane LMontreal
I feel like the structure of the course is good in how it is treated as a backlog with all the participants prioritizing topics.
Aaron GOttawa
The course was very helpful by reinforcing my commitment to scrum team responsibilty and ownership. Mark was an excellent instructor, knowledgeable, professional, and in control.
Adrian GPrivate Client
Excellent. Well worth money and time.
David MOttawa
Thanks for being so responsive and Agile in your approach to leading the class.
Deb BKitchener-Waterloo
Lively, knowledgeable instructor who delivered the material creatively (no powerpoint! ) and made everyone comfortable.
Karen BOttawa
Mark was great. Excellent sense of humor, great ability to adapt, wealth of business and sugject matter knowledge.
Jesse BPrivate Client
Mark did an excellent job. I appreciated the hands-on nature of the training wherein we actually tried to do Scrum. He was patient handling all our questions and issues, and managed to keep us engaged despite being on Zoom.
Dan MVirtual
Excellent course, gained a lot of context on SCRUM best practices beyond the context of how [Private Client] currently operates.
Hamza EPrivate Client
Mark was fantastic and the course was a great!
Henry MVirtual
Really liked it, will recommend to others.
Alexey SToronto
Mark is extremely academically knowledgeable in this space. This knowledge mixed with his real world experience and ability to engage a group makes his class a delightful experience.
Melissa MPrivate Client
I truly enjoyed the Scrum Master course. Mark shares industry knowledge so it is not just theory. The material/boards were easy to understand.
Yuri AVirtual
Very unique training style, really appreciate that I don’t have to look at power point screen. Appreciate the Q&As and the end of class recap round.
Vicky CPrivate Client
Interesting and original and knowledgeable.
Liliana MOttawa
Concepts I learned in this course are more sticky because they were demonstrated through exercise and not just explained.
Joseph MOttawa
Overall the course provide many tools and knowledge to perform the day to day work of a PO. The instructor kept a good flow, he provided sufficient time to move and get coffee/tea.
Annie SVirtual
Insightful material, engaging classroom practice.
Eliza 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
The course included everything I hoped to cover and Mark very well demonstrated its content.
Jerome CToronto
Mark is very easy to listen to. He is knowledgeable and keeps the class engaged. He has a lot of experience.
Lori 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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