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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Course: great content! Instructor: excellent and very knowledgeable on the subject.
Nadeem FEdmonton
Provided excellent understanding of scrum, more difficult concepts with a very hands on approach.
Carmen CToronto
Excellent source of knowledge and provided additional resources. Helped with real examples
Sean OPrivate Client
Mark is an articulate speaker that is easy to listen to and he brings real-life situations to the course which makes it interesting. Answers questions well and takes the time to make sure he gets his point across.
Wayne BVirtual
Mark is a great instructor, very clear and informative. Great course. High recommendable.
Simon BVancouver
Good. Has lots of experience.
Jimmy AEdmonton
Mark did a great job. I learned way more than I thought. Scrum is way more than sprints and stand ups. It's a system for effective teams.
Joshua BVirtual
Mark is awesome! I really enjoyed both courses I took with him. I much prefer in-person interaction to virtual, but his approach worked well.
Nicole BVirtual
Lots of information and data for a great walk through about the agile methodology.
Pierre-Michel AMontreal
Very knowledgeable, led the session very well.
Bob BPrivate Client
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
Mark is exceptionally knowledgeable and offered many useful tibits I can better my organization with.
James ROttawa
Instructor was very well connected with the teams. Immense knowledge on Agile and Scrum.
Deepa MOttawa
Mark is terrific at carrying a dialog on agile and his humor and humility make the class fun.
David MVirtual
I appreciate the breadth and comprehensive nature of reference material. I'm excited to read more.
Stephanie AToronto
Mark is a very engaging instructor.
Chris PEdmonton
Mark was fantastic! Great examples!
Scott MKitchener-Waterloo
Mark is a great instructor, using real life examples makes easy to understand better what the scrum methodology is and how to apply it to our roles.
Robin MVirtual
Interaction was great, content is very useful and can be applied to improve our way right way. Nice control of the group by the instructor.
Ana BMontreal
Very good two days with excellent discussions. Mark was very adept at provoking these discussions.
Richard MOttawa
Excellent. Loved the real world experience brought to the course.
Jason MOttawa
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
The instructor is clearly knowledgeable about scrum and other approaches. The course demonstrates the basics of scrum very well.
Matthew BToronto
Excellent. Well worth money and time.
David MOttawa
Provocative, amusing, thanks!
Stefan BPrivate Client
Intense and totally worth it.
Marinho MEdmonton
Mark was a very knowledgeable instructor and very passionate about the material. For a brand new subject area, I was very content and feeling comfortable in training (which usually is not the normal case). Whatever little pre-knowledge I had, this was a very great course. I took my own notes by hand and will strive the use the material as much as possible where I can. I did all of the pre-work and it definitely helped. Thank you for the training !
Brian BVirtual
Very effective and experienced instructor. Well organized.
Sam MOttawa
The course was really interactive, Mark did a great job at running the course online during the pandemic. He was always willing to answer questions and provide relevant resources. I like that the focus during class-time was more on effective implementation in the real world rather than learning text-book material.
Agata BVirtual
Mark is simply a very knowledgeable and engaging instructor. Great experience.
Emad MPrivate Client
Mark was engaging and patient. He got everyone involved and kept spirits and energy levels high.
David BPrivate Client
Mark was really engaging and very knowledgeable.
Samantha BPrivate Client
These days passed quickly, the instructor is very friendly and relaxed. Thanks again to Mark for his support!
Vlad AVirtual
Concepts I learned in this course are more sticky because they were demonstrated through exercise and not just explained.
Joseph MOttawa
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
It is very well organized and timed. The teacher has a really deep, hands-on knowledge about the subject.
Alberto MPrivate Client
Excellent instructor. Left lots of room for us to think by ourselves. Great!
Kathleen LVancouver
Instructor was very knowledgeable and expressed his thoughts honestly and concisely. Course was very informative.
Lorne APrivate Client
Mark did a great job of bringing the group into the basic tenets of Agile-Scrum whenever someone brought up a challenge/issue in the participant's particular situation.
Eric AMontreal
The whole course was both helpful and valuable. I found Mark to be knowledgeable and engaging.
Tim MPrivate Client
Another excellent course! Great balance of theory, exercises, and anecdotes.
Adam BOttawa
Mark was good - foundatian of knowledge and his experiences made for good practical examples.
Mike AMontreal
Mark is very knowledgeable and communicates the value of Scrum very clearly. He uses real-world examples which helps tremendously.
Matt MOttawa
Classes with Mark was so worthwhile! Mark has an amazing way of breaking things down so that they are understandable, and always keeping it light and fun. Overall, the course is well designed, and the topics were engaging and useful.
Mohamad AVirtual
Mark knows his stuff and delivers a highly interactive and animated training.
Ted MPrivate Client
Great course - certainly lived up to its reputation.
Ryann MKitchener-Waterloo
Instructor kept the course interested, kept us engaged through fun exercises. I love the course content, the book. Well prepared reference.
Hulya AOttawa
Mark is very good. Has a lot of working experiences and real life stories.
Wilson MEdmonton
Awesome course. I will be able to apply a number of concepts immediately to help our effectiveness at work.
Daryl PEdmonton
Mark is excellent. He uses examples that are very clear to everyone. He is patient and ensures everyone understands the material.
Emmanuel BMontreal

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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