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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Very helpful for our specific problems. Excellent responding to questions with good examples. Sense of humour. Fun but thorough course.
Tina SPrivate Client
Thank you Mark, I have lots of ideas to bring back to the team. I appreciated your energy and sense of humor.
David COttawa
Mark was an excellent instructor for this course. His ability to communicate and engage the class to understand and implement the scrum methodology is wonderful and I had a wonderful time during the course.
Pratham DVirtual
Hands on experience in the subject helps to communicate most of the inportant message throughout the course.
Wael FToronto
Thank you. It has been one of the most interesting courses I have attended.
Hemant KToronto
Very well presented to the needs of the students. Adapts to the questions and situations very well. Like real life examples encouraged discussion.
Hoyt LPrivate Client
Mark was able to translate his obvious expertise and experience in lay terms, putting the team at ease through humour, anecdotes and a good level of engagement.
Brendan GVirtual
Mark has extensive experience on which he can call on to illustrate the reason for what works and what does not.
Mark CPrivate Client
I had a great time and I highly appreciated the experience demonstrated by the instructor.
Frederick 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
Rocks! I would really recomment this instructor to others.
Raghda FToronto
Mark delivered what I think is one of the best adult learning, in a corporate training environment, I’ve experienced. And it was remote! It was engaging, entertaining and very useful. I was also very fortunate to have a great team which significantly enriched my experience.
Noah CVirtual
Crisp and concise in delivery. Captivating and inspiring. Obviously very knowledgeable and experienced.
Jason LToronto
Instructor was very entertaining and knowledgeable. I believe the course was well aligned to the scrum methodology. Very clever.
Ravi SEdmonton
Passionate and enthusiastic instructor, excellent course and materials.
Don CVancouver
The instructor is very knowledgeable in the subject and kept us motivated and alert during the course. The course itself covers lots of material which is necessary for someone who wants to become a successful scrum master.
Elena RVirtual
Created a very nice and open environment which helped the learning process.
Ricardo CKitchener-Waterloo
Provided excellent understanding of scrum, more difficult concepts with a very hands on approach.
Carmen CToronto
I was impressed. The most valuable thing was not the principles (already knew most intellectually) but the instructor's zen master answers to challnges/questions. This aided in more intutive knowledge.
David AEdmonton
Really liked it, will recommend to others.
Alexey SToronto
Instructor was great, would continue the engaging exercises and involving people in the room.
Hussein RToronto
Very knowledgeable of the subject matter. Kept the pace of the course quick, which is good.
Tarek ROttawa
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
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
Very engaging, interactive and lively CSPO virtual workshop. Mark is an excellent instructor and provided a lot of real world examples to help with understanding. Thank you for coaching. I will definitely recommend this course.
Cindy LVirtual
Really enjoyed Mark's presonal anecdotes and humour. Very clear that Mark is knowledgeable and I look forward to diving into the numerous references for "extra reading".
Naomi MOttawa
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
Instructor was very clear.
May Lynn LEdmonton
Mark is a very approachable and friendly instructor and brings some comic relief to his training sessions. He broke down Scrum/Agile so that it was very easy to follow, and always offered opportunities for the class to ask questions. I felt very supported and encouraged while learning about Scrum/Agile and was never scared to ask a question. I am looking forward to another training opportunity to learn from Mark again!
Dana SVirtual
Very knowledgeable, enjoy the practical examples that were shared.
Tina MEdmonton
Excellent work, I have a lot of ideas and appreciate the way they were introduced.
John MEdmonton
Great class. Great instructor! I will recommend!
Kim KMontreal
Mark was great explaining the concepts of Scrum. Practical solutions with testing and QA Implementation.
Ramya RKitchener-Waterloo
Highly recommend it. This was awesome. Thank you. Mark is a very good instructor.
Philippe CMontreal
It has been a long time where 5 days of work didn't feel like 5 days. The course was so fun, I really enjoyed coming into work.
Cong LVancouver
Mark is incredibly well prepared and professional. Best instructor I've ever had, period.
Kevin DKitchener-Waterloo
Mark was such a great and fun instructor! He is very knowledgeable and good at explaining Scrum in a way that can be understood by all. I would definitely recommend this course with Mark to my colleagues and team!
Audrey MVirtual
Really enjoyed the course. Mark has a unique way of explaining concepts that have a very positive effect on the learning process.
Daniel LMontreal
Mark was great. He definitely understands and believes in what he is teaching. He made sure to go slowly and would always check to see if we understood.
Adrien GVirtual
Very effective and experienced instructor. Well organized.
Sam MOttawa
This was a fantastic, informative course! I'm ready to try a few of the retro "games" with the team next week.
Erin GOttawa
Excellent job of teaching about using scrum. Very good job engaging the class and providing a fun place to learn. Full moneys worth.
Eric CToronto
Mark is great trainer, and explained all the terms in a way for us to easy understand.
Cynthia SVirtual
Mark is very knowledgeable and did a great job. I like the frequency of the breaks. With the frequency of breakout rooms, jumping around documents, it was clear he was prepared.
Matthew RVirtual
Mark is totally wonderfully weird and knowledgeable.
Sarah MOttawa
The instructor and the course both were awesome.
Rajeev RToronto
Outstanding wealth of knowledge, enjoyed the methods used.
Robert VOttawa
I had heard great reviews of this course and I was not disappointed. Excellent materials. Excellent instructor.
Jeromy VEdmonton
Excellent instructor. Left lots of room for us to think by ourselves. Great!
Kathleen LVancouver
This was the first professional class I've taken that gave me a more in depth perspective of the scrum process. Really concise in explanations. Stays on topic as best as possible. Extremely helpful.
Michelle KToronto

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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