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, you're awesome! Certainly one of the best instructors I've had the pleasure of learning from. The course is absolutely helpful in building good foundational knowledge of scrum and especially the scrum master role.
Debbie LToronto
Mark is quick-witted, experienced, blunt, and plays role of a neutral facilitaor very well. He made three content heavy days digestible, relevant to my work life, and enjoyable.
Craig BPrivate 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 was very engaging and provides an excellent overview of the Scrum methodology.
Stephane LEdmonton
This was a great course that I will recomment to others! A lot to cover in a short period of time, and I managed to understand most if not all material. I'm excited to take my learnings with me and apply to my role at my company!
Lesleanne BToronto
Mark did an excellent job facilitating the course and the content was very helpful. We covered a lot of ground in three sessions and the pre-learning was helpful too! Mark was patient and respectful and very supportive throughout the sessions. It was a pleasure to spend the time with Mark and to learn from someone who obviously knows his subject.
Debbie BVirtual
Mark is very knowledgeable and really challenges the class to engage, speak, think about the core concepts, even when it’s messy/unclear in “real world” situations. I talked to a couple of my colleagues afterward and even the ones who were having difficulty with the usefulness of Scrum in their professional lives really enjoyed the course and the instructor, myself included.
Louis BVirtual
Provocative, amusing, thanks!
Stefan BPrivate Client
Mark is excellent. He uses examples that are very clear to everyone. He is patient and ensures everyone understands the material.
Emmanuel BMontreal
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 was extremely knowledgeable, effective teacher, responded well to students and has an excellent sense of humour.
Kely BVancouver
Instructor very knowledgeable, supportive, and a great coach.
Jay BVancouver
Mark is an awesome instructor who does an excellent job of describing Scrum. Brilliant course!
Tom BEdmonton
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
Very good. Great at illustrating his point.
Manny BOttawa
Great course! Very down to earth and humourous instructor. Would recommend to others!
Steve BKitchener-Waterloo
I find the instructor very knowledgeable and experienced in Scrum. He was very well organized and prepared for the course. He encouraged in class participation and elevated course content with real life examples. Well played! The course, its content and material covered Scrum very well.
Alena CVancouver
Great instructor, learned a lot and enjoyed.
David POttawa
(Instructor was) very pragmatic and opened your mind and steer conversation, so you can figure it out, instead of reading through material.
Priya PPrivate Client
Great instructor - very clear and easy to follow. Makes you think.
Linda LOttawa
I enjoyed Mark's personality and vast knowledge he provided.
Adrian CToronto
The instructor is clearly knowledgeable about scrum and other approaches. The course demonstrates the basics of scrum very well.
Matthew BToronto
Very engaging instructor and scenarios.
Christine APrivate Client
Energetic. Applied scrum in practice by helping lead us to answers in many modules.
Laura LVancouver
Well presented - effective - open to discussion - provides information that shows us better methods and resources for self learning.
Bedros NMontreal
Lively, knowledgeable instructor who delivered the material creatively (no powerpoint! ) and made everyone comfortable.
Karen BOttawa
Mark is very well prepared and understands his material in depth. He has a very logical way of looking at questions which can shift people’s understanding in a useful way. If you need to understand “pure” Scrum, this is a good course.
Paul AVirtual
Thank you. Enjoyed your examples and how these methods can be used in the real world.
Jenna MToronto
Really dynamic! Use scrum tools to control the flow of the course which is a good example.
Marc LMontreal
Very good at keeping interest. Very dynamic, engages easily with students.
Paul PMontreal
Great course to get started. Mark is greatly knowledgeable and shares well the information.
Christine AMontreal
Mark provides clarity into the mystical world of Agile and Scrum with practical examples and Jedi wisdom. Add some psychosocial games into the batch and your in for an adventure. Training will test not just your ability to obtain facts, but leave you pondering the cavernous opportunities for the scum master to be an agent of organizational change.
Petrus BVirtual
Truly an expert. Knows his stuff.
Denise AOttawa
There was not a single bit of content that wasn't helpful.
Bruno PMontreal
Lots of information and data for a great walk through about the agile methodology.
Pierre-Michel AMontreal
I recommend all newbees and Agile to take Mark's class. End of the day, you will walk out with confidence.
Hema PKitchener-Waterloo
Mark, you are awesome! I enjoyed your style of teaching/coaching. You focused on our needs and priorities ensuring a "happy customer." You are also respectful towards everyone's opinion which makes it engaging conversation.
Zeeshan BOttawa
Awsome course, Learned an amazing amout. Mark is fun and an interesting man. He made learning fun.
Donna REdmonton
Great course. Mark clearly knows his stuff!
Marc LOttawa
Excellent course. Recommend for people that have done some Scrum and read all the readings. Mark is a great instructor. Among best I've had.
David MEdmonton
Good course. In the end it is going to be us to make [Private Client] an even better company and a even better product.
Steve MPrivate Client
Mark is a great instructor that gave us a lot of examples. Generated collaboration.
Francois NMontreal
Excellent, great management of large group, Excellent information
Susan LPrivate Client
Mark is very well read, with lots of breadth. Mark helped to challenge participants' ways of thinking that could impede scrum implementation.
Louise BOttawa
Mark was able to provide valuable lessons in a short period of time. Using a variety of methods he illustrated and reinforced the key elements of scrum.
Sean BOttawa
Good. Has lots of experience.
Jimmy AEdmonton
Great instructor, great technique using Scrum to learn.
Jen MToronto
Energetic, clear, helpful, inspiring, a great teacher.
Nadil POttawa
Mark is a patient and very organized coach. I appreciate the ability to get through so much information in only 2 days. Mark really focuses on what one needs to have a better understand of scrum and it's benefits.
Brian AVirtual
Mark is great - knows the material and can address all questions, prompting us to try and answer them first! Great trainer, I would recommend him to others.
Frances AOttawa

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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