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 a pleasure to learn from. His knowledge and enthusiasm were refreshing.
Harold MKitchener-Waterloo
This was a fantastic, informative course! I'm ready to try a few of the retro "games" with the team next week.
Erin GOttawa
I like the way the course was taught through examples and games. I found personal anecdotes helpful in understanding concepts.
Randy EOttawa
It was a pleasure learning with Mark. The scrum-like structure of the course made it interactive and fun.
Florent GToronto
Mark is adept at relating Agile to both techanical and everyday tasks. This is useful in groups include non-techanical members. While he has tendency to get sidetracked, the divergences are useful and relevant, adding depth to the topic under discussion.
Erin LPrivate Client
The course was well laid out, a good mix of discussions, examples, and practice.
Chris FToronto
This was a good course. Plenty of offline reading and later reference. For a full two day course, I am informed but not exhausted.
Chris GKitchener-Waterloo
Instructor is super knowledgeable and shared his wealth of expertise in a meaning manner.
Randy GPrivate Client
Great experience and great delivery. Really enjoyable course!
Darren HOttawa
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
I really liked that although we did a paper website exercise we used it as a tool for conversation and there wasn't pressure to complete and present it to the group.
Angela GToronto
Great course and great instructor! Will definitely recommend to friends!
Hisham EOttawa
Appreciated the flexibility of discussing things out of order as team comments took us there. Enjoyed interactive format, no slides. Helpful workbook.
Annette GPrivate Client
Second course with Mark went great. I have to figure out how to afford more?
David HMontreal
Always entertaining and I feel like I learned a ton!
Michael ROttawa
Content and pace of course was good. Mark was a great coach and answered questions thoroughly.
Chris RKitchener-Waterloo
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
Mark was a great instructor with real-world knowledge and experience. He made the course fun and interesting. He was very patient and answered all questions; offered follow up reading material and books.
Tania DVirtual
This was a great introduction to the Agile world and methodology. This could be a great tool in the office if used properly.
Guytwin FMontreal
Mark was awesome, very enthusiastic about the subject and more importantly was very knowledgeableabout Scrum Master role and Scrum.
David OPrivate Client
Mark is excellent. He instructs and communicates in simple and visual ways that are memorable. He is adaptable, and does a great job balancing needs of individuals and the group.
Ryan MToronto
I really enjoyed the course. Mark really understands the topic and is willing to go into great depth about items the students wished. Very enjoyable.
Mark MKitchener-Waterloo
Very informative course on the use of Scrum for software development. It covers all the areas of scrum, including all the key players and demonstrates how the roles, responsibilities and process work together to create effective, self organizing teams.
Amera PEdmonton
Brilliantly said. I am happy to be part of this Scrum Product owner course.
Esva PMontreal
Mark is very enthusiastic and responsive, good at eliciting participation, diverse exercises to keep us from getting bored, informative answers. Good focus on cross-functional teams and sharing non-dev where we fit in.
Carly HPrivate Client
The instructor had an excellent breadth and depth of knowledge. Liberally sprinkled with relevent ancedotes to provide substance and humor.
Myles GPrivate Client
I really appreciated the workshop environment where all participants were willing to share perspectives and answer questions. Again, the breakout sessions and exercises were amazing in practicing and understanding Scrum events. Kudos.
Davide VVirtual
I cannot say anything but good things about the course, and have been telling many people in my org about it.
Hatem NVirtual
Awesome instructor and course! Will recommend!
Mikael GOttawa
Mark was great at reorganizing our organizational challenges. He was dynamic and kept me interested the entire time.
Jessica PPrivate Client
Well done, Mark. We laughed a lot and you made this real for us.
Joshua SKitchener-Waterloo
Excellent course! Not a wasted minute!
John MOttawa
The failure-based models used for learning were effective.
Vince RVirtual
Mark has an engaging style and a ton of experience which he shares freely.
Wanda PMontreal
Mark was very personable and knowledgeable about the subject. Nothing threw him.
Sharon GPrivate Client
It was great! Very well explained and engaging.
Donald HToronto
This was a fantastic course and I would recommend it to anyone. Mark is an excellent teacher and provides great examples and easy-to-understand explanations. There was a good balance of listening, working in a group, and discussion. We ran sprint simulations which helped hammer down the concepts.
Julia HVirtual
Great seminar, very helpful and Mark showed us in real time examples the application of Scrum.
Pierre EMontreal
I thoroughly enjoyed Mark's presentation style and communication.
Joshua RVirtual
Excellent instructor and the course was great. A lot of thought provoking exercises that bring home the idea of scrum.
Deena SToronto
I had the best two days of practical training on Agile. Instructor has logical answers to my questions.
Angie EEdmonton
Content, Pace, Instructor: all 5/5 stars
LeAnne SOttawa
This was a very illuminating overview of Scrum roles and best practices, taught by a very engaging instructor.
Douglas GPrivate Client
Two thumb up! = Great, very worthy for the money I paid.
Juan Manuel GOttawa
Concepts I learned in this course are more sticky because they were demonstrated through exercise and not just explained.
Joseph MOttawa
Course gave me clarity on the basic principles of Scrum. Drove home the power of 'team'.
Lia PToronto
Instructor was very engaging and helped me learn a lot and I have a lot of actions to take back to hep the team. I think we learned enough to help the team and guide them effectively as a scrum master.
Ian ROttawa
The simulations and exercises were extremely useful in the understanding of the concept. Mark made the course thoroughly enjoyable. Extremely pleased by the techniques used and the content of the course.
Dhaval SOttawa
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
Mark was very engaging, and his training session helped to increase my knowledge of Agile and Scrum.
Tiffany MToronto

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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