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 flow and preparation. Really knows his stuff and transfer of knowledge is good.
Sonia MMontreal
Mark was recommended to me from a colleague and I honestly was delighted of how much I learned from the course. I have been as a project manager for a number of years, and I really felt that I was able to understand how to apply this to my current work and also even how to work within my working style.
Joyce KVirtual
Great content, stories, anecdotes. Enjoyed instructor's enthusiasm and knowledge on the subject.
Paul JMontreal
Amazing instructor! Makes you feel like he knows from ages! Very interactive class.
Kaushik KVirtual
Great course. I was unfamiliar with the role of scrum master apart from what I had read. This course gave me a great introduction and appreciation of what a good scrummaster can accomplish. The challenge now would be to implement it in my organization. Many tips were provided for this too so I am very optimistic.
Shabira JEdmonton
Fantastic 2 days. Loved the incorporation of practical exercies. Lots of feedback and helps you understand how people think.
Tony KVancouver
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
As a test manager I was looking for a bridge between my Scrum learning and current skills, and becoming confident that I could act as a scrum master. This course provided it.
Rachel JToronto
Mark was intellegent, able to improvise, and brought humor to the class. He supports diversity, no one should feel uncomfortable.
Jeffrey LMontreal
Mark did an awesome job. He is very knowledgable, helpful, and patient. I will recommend this course for sure.
Jamal EToronto
Great course that makes you think.
Seok Woo JToronto
Mark delivered the course exceptionally well.
Amjad GEdmonton
Very informative and fun learning session.
Kim KPrivate Client
Great course! I will recommend this to others.
Darryl EVancouver
Excellent. 5 on the scale of 1 to 5.
Suhas KToronto
Excellent instruction with deep knowledge of scrum. All questions or clarfications were answered. Provided information I can take back to my team.
Emilia KOttawa
The combination of hands-on practice and excellent facilitation style made this course enjoyable, useful and very applicable to my day to day life as a Project Manager. The content was carefully curated and meaningful discussions were had during the session. It was engaging, interactive and insightful! I would highly recommend Mark and the Agile Pain Relief company for anyone looking to do their CSM training and pass the exam!
Valerie GVirtual
Mark was a very good lively instructor who cared for all the questions. I am normally a quiet person, but I felt safe enough to speak up and answer questions.
Brenna GEdmonton
Mark was very approachable, friendly, and knowledgable. He has done a great job in helping someone like me who doesn't belong to a corporate world learn so much about scrum in 2 days!
Mashiat FToronto
Training was excellent with good interaction. Knowledge sharing is good. Course was practically and informative. Mark Levison is enthusiastic with English subtle sense of humour and really aware of what he is explaining. The course helped to build confidence, valuable experiences and learning.
Yana KVirtual
Mark was an excellent instructor and I learned a lot in this workshop considering it was only 2 days. I would recommend it to my friends and colleagues.
Mohamed EVirtual
Instructor was clearly knowledgable and many examples were given. I was able to follow with nearly no prior scrum/Agile experience.
Kevin KOttawa
The instructor was very adaptive and knowledgeable. I respect how the instructor worked and would take another course with him in the future.
Johnny KEdmonton
I had the best two days of practical training on Agile. Instructor has logical answers to my questions.
Angie EEdmonton
Exceptional presentation delivery that is clear, concise, and though-provoking, involving tremendous audience participation.
Norman EOttawa
Hands on experience in the subject helps to communicate most of the inportant message throughout the course.
Wael FToronto
This was a very illuminating overview of Scrum roles and best practices, taught by a very engaging instructor.
Douglas GPrivate Client
Mark is fun and engaging and has a great way of importing information in a memorable way.
Brittany LOttawa
Remarkable! Knowledgeable! Relatable! Mark's style was a style that I can relate to. I was engaged. Enjoyed the variety of explanations, sharing screens, working with my team mates. The overall structure and delivery of the training material exceeded my expectations.
Brenda DVirtual
Mark is an excellent trainer with examples and practices. Very organized and the best thing is his response to our questions with example, in addition, the amount of references that might help up improve as a scrum master.
Dona AMontreal
Excellent communicator, good at focusing on the important topics.
Mick BPrivate Client
Mark is very entertaining and knowledgable, the combination of which made for a great two days of training, well done!
Daniel JKitchener-Waterloo
Very well done. Good introduction of the concepts, good use of technology, good practical incorporation of the methods being taught into the course itself, 10/10
Adam GVirtual
Honest and open, encouraged us to think on our own. Really highlighted this is not a defined process, we need to figure out what works best for our teams,
Alana GPrivate Client
Was an extremely focused and well organized two days, I have taken other courses in similar timelines but found this significantly easier to consume and digest the information. Mark was funny, and left me with an impression of “this guy is legit, and extremely intelligent, I need to soak up his knowledge”.
Jack BVirtual
Excellent, expert, engaging, humourous, I would strongly recommend any course offered by Mark!
Tod MVancouver
Very knowledgeable in what he is teaching. Passion for scrum.
Mandi AEdmonton
Mark did a fantastic job. [Private Client] was a unique challenge of a long history with hardened habits, as well as a very peculiar definition of Agile and SCRUM.
Imran APrivate Client
Instructor very knowledgeable, supportive, and a great coach.
Jay BVancouver
Amazing instructor, very clear and breaks our pre-conceived understandings.
Jean-Francois BMontreal
Instructor was very clear.
May Lynn LEdmonton
Great course, a lot of valuable information. Experienced instructor, great ability to adapt to group and real work situtations.
Karen LPrivate Client
Great! Fun! And I learned something too! Seriously, one of the best training sessions for my personal growth.
Pierre VMontreal
Mark was fantastic! Great examples!
Scott MKitchener-Waterloo
Calm, knowledgeable, and open to questions. Great.
Brandon GVirtual
I found Mark to be engaged, upbeat, and very knowledgeable.
Peter LPrivate Client
The course material is great and the way Mark presents it is very clear. Mark augments the material with real-world scrum experience across many components/orgs.
Scott NOttawa
Instructor was very passionate about subject and links theory to concrete examples.
Jean-Philippe BMontreal
Very knowledgeable, informative, flexible in fitting situations into ideas.
Katie MOttawa
Mark did a fantastic job incorporating SCRUM through the training while not giving answers, but forcing us to think on our own.
Kellen BKitchener-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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