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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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
He explained extremely well and gave great concrete examples. Helped to see how to apply to work place.
Genevieve CMontreal
Instructor is very knowledgeable and delivers the course extremely well. Makes it interesting!
Brian APrivate Client
Very patient. Really liked the group activity where we had to work in Sprints on user stories.
Anita AVirtual
Instructor was amazing, easy to listen to and follow. Did not read from book and provided concrete examples.
Tricia AOttawa
Amazing experience. Mark is a great inspirational mentor. Teaches me how to approach problems and think out of the box.
Ben HKitchener-Waterloo
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
Great conversations. Thanks, Mark! My confidence in understanding the role increased!
Orville HEdmonton
Mark Levison is an outstanding instructor who knows how to effectively deliver course content tailored to the learning needs of this students. Everyone on the course benefited greatly from his ability to present new information in a clear and easily understood manner. The Agile Foundations course provided an excellent overview of the Agile Methodology and SCRUM.
Michael GVirtual
Mark's briiliant, I would like an assessment on our company and some hints.
Stefano GToronto
Really liked the approach by Mark to apply Scrum methodology to this training. Also Mark was available to answer questions and patient.
Damien JOttawa
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
Excellent work, I have a lot of ideas and appreciate the way they were introduced.
John MEdmonton
Excellent. Well worth money and time.
David MOttawa
Mark was a great instructor, really made the content easily understandable and great at answering questions.
Melanie MVirtual
Greatly impressed by the teaching style and format of the course. Much appreciate the sprint style format and the engagment level of the instructor.
Hatem NOttawa
Really dynamic! Use scrum tools to control the flow of the course which is a good example.
Marc LMontreal
Mark has helped me learn Agile in a fun way. The hands on experience have added value for a non-agile user like me.
Keerthiga NEdmonton
Mark was passionate and knowledgeable about this topic. He had the energy to keep it all interesting and was really animated. He showed great respect for all class members.
Peggy OPrivate Client
I liked it very much. Too bad it was only two days.
Igor SToronto
Very good at keeping interest. Very dynamic, engages easily with students.
Paul PMontreal
Mark was awesome, very enthusiastic about the subject and more importantly was very knowledgeableabout Scrum Master role and Scrum.
David OPrivate Client
Very engaging instructor. Used many real-life examples.
Laura OPrivate Client
A good introduction about scrum, roles of PO, SM and team. Opened up my thoughts on how it could be applied/practiced effectively and efficiently to build a good team.
Rajesh MOttawa
To the point and with passion!
Colin MToronto
Energetic. Applied scrum in practice by helping lead us to answers in many modules.
Laura LVancouver
Mark is very knowledgable and an excellent communicator. So far my favourite Agile coach.
Fabricio MOttawa
I enjoyed the hands-on nature of the course and Mark's presentation style. My mind was blown several times in the two days which was unexpected and completely awesome.
Heather OEdmonton
Mark was knowledgable and provided us with a good base to start with.
Maria Noah MPrivate Client
The course provided an excellent deep dive into scrum and the role of the scrum master. The instructor was very knowledgeable and well versed on the research of scrum.
Robyne LOttawa
Excellent instructor providing clear explanations. The course structure is flawless.
Benoit NMontreal
I have appreciated using the scrum to the training course itself.
Ionut MMontreal
He is a great listener, well spoken and gives great examples and explanations. Speaks slowly, makes sure everyone understands.
Maxime MMontreal
Mark is an amazing instructor-- knowledgeable, professional, but also humorous and fun. This is not one of those cookie-cutter courses, because Mark tailors the discussions to the needs of his students. It is suitable for someone new to Scrum, but also others with Scrum experience who would like to get more in-depth.
Sandy LVirtual
Awesome and objective! Careful not to influence how we work by answering other students.
Shawn MMontreal
Very knowledgable and lots of references. Puts things into context and gives lots of examples to relate to many businesses.
Brent MEdmonton
Mark's teaching methods make the course fly and help the information stick. He gives a clear understanding of the theory of agile/scrum and real world application tips so students can apply scrum immediately and successfully.
Anne MOttawa
Very good two days with excellent discussions. Mark was very adept at provoking these discussions.
Richard MOttawa
Very informative. Well presented. Good tempo.
Robert MOttawa
Concepts I learned in this course are more sticky because they were demonstrated through exercise and not just explained.
Joseph MOttawa
Mark Levison's teaching style is interactive and informative and really captures the essence off Scrum. I would recommend it to any company who struggles with the same issue we do - chaos!
Philip QVancouver
Mark was a great commincator of the concepts. He practiced what he preached by using SCRUM to team.
Darren MMontreal
Mark was great at adapting to our needs - how very agile!
Mika TPrivate Client
Instructor was very well connected with the teams. Immense knowledge on Agile and Scrum.
Deepa MOttawa
Excellent instructor. Would highly recommend.
Kyle TToronto
Knowledgable and engaged the trainees to think and share their ideas.
Carol BPrivate Client
The class is not boring. Time went by quickly. I really enjoyed your class. I now have a starting point.
Katerina TOttawa
Mark inspires you to make yourself better in the roles which makes your workplace better. I wish he could come to my place of employ to get us setup to succeed. Might have to look into that.
Jackie MEdmonton
Fantastic overview of Scrum and the need to create High Performing Teams.
Greg LEdmonton
Content and pace of course was good. Mark was a great coach and answered questions thoroughly.
Chris RKitchener-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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