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 is an awesome instructor! The course was very valuable and useful.
Chandni LToronto
The instructor was able to cram a staggering amount of learning into a very short amount of time in a very effective manner. I highly-recommend this training for any Scrum Product Owner or Scrum Dev Team member. The instructor was even able to effectively maintain the energy levels of the students throughout the 2-day course by taking sufficient breaks and by introducing sufficient novelty between modules to keep things interesting throughout.
Tyler TVirtual
Mark is a great instructor and very knowledgeable in agile and scrum. The course was fun and we had lots of opportunities for learning through practice. I would recommend this course to anyone who is interested in Scrum or has aspirations in being a ScrumMaster.
Jason HVirtual
Mark was very personable, easy going and knows what he was teaching. This makes the class environment more interactive and fun
Dan DVirtual
Great energy. Interesting course material.
Julie CToronto
Great instructor, very satisfied, will recomment! I brought my whole team with me, happy I did.
Joshua COttawa
I enjoyed Mark's teaching style. I like the personal stories and puns. I always like to bring humor in to my meeting or when I am teaching or mentoring, it evokes a positive emotion and people will retain the information better. A+++ Would like to attend other courses done by Mark.
Shanna FVirtual
Mark did an awesome job. He is very knowledgable, helpful, and patient. I will recommend this course for sure.
Jamal EToronto
It was a great experience coming to Agile Scrum just a few months ago allowed this to solidify a lot of things I've been practicing. I will likely immediately reap the rewards.
Curtis BOttawa
Great course! I will recommend this to others.
Darryl EVancouver
Instructor is very knowledgeable and delivers the course extremely well. Makes it interesting!
Brian APrivate Client
Mark was engaging, knowledgeable, well-read and provided great examples.
Warren CVancouver
Mark is very knowledgeable on the subject and always had good arguments to overcome the "we couldn't do this in our organization".
Sebastien DPrivate Client
He is very engaging and clear. It was easy to grasp the concepts and apply it to exercises.
Jamielyn CToronto
Mark was awesome. Engaging and interactive. Course material is detailed but not overwhelming.
Adam DToronto
Excellent communicator and interacts well with the class. Great knowledge of course material and a genuine advocate of Scrum.
Tony CToronto
Mark did a great job of purposefully making us all feel included and engaged with his class. He added great clarity to the budding scrum process that has taken over in my workplace. I have seen many versions and perspectives on scrum values that deviate and distort how scrum would work, but I am now confident I can facilitate with my projects and team, using a much clearer scrum.
Charlene FVirtual
I found Mark very knowledgeable and it was interactive and information. As a non techy I found it easy to follow and not out of my depth. Found it adaptible form to follow in all walks of life and careers.
Suzanne HPrivate Client
Passionate and knowledgeable!
Derek LVancouver
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
Mark did a fantastic job. [Private Client] was a unique challenge of a long history with hardened habits, as well as a very peculiar definition of Agile and SCRUM.
Imran APrivate Client
The course was well laid out, a good mix of discussions, examples, and practice.
Chris FToronto
Mark was a great instructor with real-world knowledge and experience. He made the course fun and interesting. He was very patient and answered all questions; offered follow up reading material and books.
Tania DVirtual
Mark is great and the course is very valuable. I really appricate your time and patience. We covered a lot of mtaterial which is great.
William DOttawa
Interesting personality and presentation style. Instructor's views align well with my own -> don't continue doing 'insane' things
Brad LEdmonton
Mark was fantastic. He really knows how to keep everyone engaged and I found the course really fun. Still subscribe to the belief that learning is done best when you're having fun so thank you :)
Sabrina AVirtual
Mark Levison was very effective in delivering the material for the class. He kept it interesting and interactive even though this was an online course.
Marie LVirtual
This course helped me get a significant understanding of what Scrum is, how it can be applied in my real life work environment and what benefits could I have from it. The instructor was passionate about the subject, which helped me stay focus and interested.
Vincent MVirtual
I cannot say anything but good things about the course, and have been telling many people in my org about it.
Hatem NVirtual
The content of the course covered most of things I was looking for. Mark is a knowledgeable instructor and was able to answer all of the queries the class had.
Ramandeep MEdmonton
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
Fantastic overview of Scrum and the need to create High Performing Teams.
Greg LEdmonton
Mark delivered an excellent course, it was a value-packed 2 days.
Brent COttawa
Mark did a great job teaching, providing examples, and exersises. This is my third session and I would recommend him.
Cheryl ROttawa
Very informative. Well presented. Good tempo.
Robert MOttawa
This course was an essential intro for me, a noob in Scrum. I was guided through material I need to know, while at the same time allowed to explore concepts on my own.
Vanessa MToronto
Fantastic course. I was really happy with the structure, the breaks, and the group interaction. I've taken other online courses like this before and really felt like there was a good balance between listening, discussions, applying the knowledge, and pauses.
Amanda PVirtual
Mark did an excellent job running the course. Explanations were clear and he was open to all questions.
Michael DToronto
Mark really knows this material well and was able to address all questions well to the satisfaction of everyone. Managed the room and our assigned tasks/activities well.
Ursula JToronto
Mark is adept at relating Agile to both techanical and everyday tasks. This is useful in groups include non-techanical members. While he has tendency to get sidetracked, the divergences are useful and relevant, adding depth to the topic under discussion.
Erin LPrivate Client
Much more than expected. Great experience! I appreciate it very much!
Alfredo FOttawa
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 was great. I appreciated his directness.
James POttawa
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
Masters the subject more than anyone else I've met.
Carlo DMontreal
Mark was a great instructor! Very enthusiastic about the course and assisting its participants in becoming successful product owners. Incredibly knowledgeable and entertaining.
Elizabeth CToronto
Mark was very engaging, and his training session helped to increase my knowledge of Agile and Scrum.
Tiffany MToronto
Mark presented very well. Class well organized. Liked the zoo activity and actually applying the scrum guidleines to a sprint.
Laurel PEdmonton
Mark did a great job and was impressed how well it worked virtually and not in person!
Jennifer PVirtual
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

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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