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 was great at teaching the class. He really knows the course and it is obvious Scrum is second nature to him. Real life experience (in class exercises) are key to learning Scrum.
Cara CToronto
I like to recommend this course to other team members to help everyone get to the same mindset and understanding. I gained a clearer understanding of what Agile really is and I'd like to see it work in my future projects.
Lynda SEdmonton
Excellent. Loved the real world experience brought to the course.
Jason MOttawa
Mark was an extremely engaging and informative instructor. I enjoyed all of the aspects of the course/topics covered. I look forward to continuing my Agile education because of this course.
Cailey RToronto
Instructor was engaging, kept the interest of the class. Nice material, I really like how we got into Scrum framework right away by using the backlog analogy for the course topics.
Cecilia OOttawa
Mark is Great! I took a CSM course from him 11 years ago, hence I picked this course again 11 years later.
Justin LVirtual
Very informative. Well presented. Good tempo.
Robert MOttawa
Great flow and preparation. Really knows his stuff and transfer of knowledge is good.
Sonia MMontreal
Very good two days with excellent discussions. Mark was very adept at provoking these discussions.
Richard MOttawa
Great course - certainly lived up to its reputation.
Ryann MKitchener-Waterloo
Mark appears to be knowledgeable and highly experienced in Scrum and did a great job in creating more clarity for the group on complex concepts.
Ryan RVirtual
Very interactive and entertaining. I wasn't bored for a second!
Anahita SToronto
Mark is one of the most interesting humans I’ve had the pleasure to meet. As a student, I can tell he genuinely has our interest and development in mind when creating and delivering his workshops. I can’t say enough good things about the practical knowledge I’ve gained taking this training.
Michael RVirtual
Instructor was great, would continue the engaging exercises and involving people in the room.
Hussein RToronto
Mark was fantastic. Possibly the best, most prepared instructor I've seen. He was awesome.
Colin MToronto
Excellent course! I learned a lot although I reliaze there's a lot to cover but now I have a very good understanding of scrum.
Martin ROttawa
Really dynamic. A lot of information about the mindset and objectives versus the actual techniques.
Valerie ROttawa
Mark was a good speaker and resourceful instructor. Exercises were practical and useful.
Ronald MPrivate Client
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 you are a rockstar and I truly enjoyed and hopefully benefit.
Kerry OPrivate Client
Excellent instructor and very knowledgeable. I feel much more prepared for a process that I am already a part of.
Shamir REdmonton
Good instructor. On point. Assertive and describes the problems and approaches well.
Andrei POttawa
Mark is an engaging instructor using conversation and interaction as the engagement catalyst!
Shawn RToronto
Interesting and original and knowledgeable.
Liliana MOttawa
Great! Very enthuiastic instructor and made learning a breeze.
Dalbir SKitchener-Waterloo
Excellent, very knowledgeable, good real world examples.
Steve OMontreal
Lots of information. Agenda was covered in full. Role play very effective. If you can apply the Scrum, it is a very good course to attend.
Mitch RToronto
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 easy to get along with and makes points very clearly.
Jason PToronto
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
Mark is extremely academically knowledgeable in this space. This knowledge mixed with his real world experience and ability to engage a group makes his class a delightful experience.
Melissa MPrivate Client
Really appreciate the efforts and ernest delivery.
Shauna REdmonton
I love this course. It was incredibly helpful and throught provoking. I enjoyed the teach style and directness of the instructor.
Victoria MEdmonton
Instructor was well organized and touched each topic in a sequential matter that was logical.
Joe PMontreal
Very knowledgeable and examples that are applicable to our reality.
Allen SOttawa
Added some very interesting info as well as presented the material very well clearly.
Yvonne REdmonton
I thoroughly enjoyed the course. While the two days were intensive and tiring, I learned a lot about scrum and becoming scrum master. Mark was a great instructor in that he was very knowledgeable and experienced in the subject. He set up a great environment where everyone can be engaged and have their questions answered. I'm really glad I took the course and I hope to continue learning more about Scrum, which now has become even more fascinating to me.
Maria SVirtual
Very knowledgeable of the subject matter. Kept the pace of the course quick, which is good.
Tarek ROttawa
Mark Levison lives and embodies the SCRUM in his courses. Never before have I felt so empowered to self-organize in a classroom setting.
Zoltan MOttawa
Great job, Mark. Great overall devliery. Kept the content interesting.
Parv SToronto
The instructor and the course both were awesome.
Rajeev RToronto
Mark thanks for sharing your knowledge. I truly enjoyed your course. You have a great teaching ability.
Anaya MOttawa
Excellent work, I have a lot of ideas and appreciate the way they were introduced.
John MEdmonton
Instructor was very engaging and helped me learn a lot and I have a lot of actions to take back to hep the team. I think we learned enough to help the team and guide them effectively as a scrum master.
Ian ROttawa
Mark is insightful, a pleasure to listen to, and inspires me toward making the changes needed so that I can work out a high-performance team.
Mike SVancouver
The course was informative and engaging. It was delivered in a way that help me achieve better understanding of the material, Mark rocks!!
Akhmad SPrivate Client
Energetic. Applied scrum in practice by helping lead us to answers in many modules.
Laura LVancouver
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
Intense and totally worth it.
Marinho MEdmonton
Excellent course, great depth of knowledge from the instructor, well paced and well run.
Kurt OEdmonton

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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