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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Great energy. Interesting course material.
Julie CToronto
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
Passionate and enthusiastic instructor, excellent course and materials.
Don CVancouver
Mark has figured out how to take a complex and vast subject and make it engaging via Zoom. That's amazing.
Natasha DVirtual
Created a very nice and open environment which helped the learning process.
Ricardo CKitchener-Waterloo
Fantastic. Very engaging and helpful blend of both Scrum and general business advice.
Dace DOttawa
Excellent instructor!!! Expert in Agile/Scrum.
Marc BOttawa
This was a great course with an engaging instructor - well worth the time of anyone who wants to learn more about product ownership.
Mark BVirtual
Lively, knowledgeable instructor who delivered the material creatively (no powerpoint! ) and made everyone comfortable.
Karen BOttawa
The course does an excellent job in this covid world. Lots was learned even though I have been working in an agile environment for years. Would certainly return to Agile Pain Relief if I decide to pursue future training.
Robert AVirtual
Mark is a great presenter. I appreciate that he is to the point and succinct in his points, but can expand when prompted. I appreciate that there was room for "derailment" and that the training was made more custom tailored to the individual experiences of the scrum masters at our org. The subject matter was good. I think it contained a lot of the info that new scrum masters don't think about, and covered a lot of traps that they fall into.
Adel AVirtual
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
I enjoyed Mark's personality and vast knowledge he provided.
Adrian CToronto
Mark was great! He was honest and open at points during the training - always resetting the expectations of Scrum, driving home the framework, what it will do and will not do. He is helpful and willing to answer questions.
Dawn DKitchener-Waterloo
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
Provided excellent understanding of scrum, more difficult concepts with a very hands on approach.
Carmen CToronto
Great instructor, very satisfied, will recomment! I brought my whole team with me, happy I did.
Joshua COttawa
Well presented material, excellent real world examples of applying scrum framework.
Brian BOttawa
Great! Humour is a plus too!
Daryl BVancouver
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
The instructor was well prepared, and extremely knowledgeable. The course was structured in a way that it was easy to follow, well structured, and easy to be engaged. All the team activities were extremely useful to put in practice the theory. I enjoyed every single one! Virtual learning is a really difficult environment, and the instructor made it look like a piece of cake, kept us engaged throughout the days. Kuddos!
Jenny CVirtual
I felt that Mark is an incredible teacher. He's extemely knowledgeable on the subject and shares his experience with the entire class. Very structured.
Anthony PToronto
The whole course was both helpful and valuable. I found Mark to be knowledgeable and engaging.
Tim MPrivate Client
Very knowledgeable instructor that kept the course interesting. Course material was awesome! I will recommend to others.
Dave PToronto
Great facilitation techniques often used as a regular classroom teacher (i.e. rephrasing, simplificaion, observing, hinting, investigative learning).
Mike PMontreal
Mark uses his extensive experience in scrum training and software dev to add relevent examples which help understand SCRUM better.
Affan MPrivate Client
He is a great listener, well spoken and gives great examples and explanations. Speaks slowly, makes sure everyone understands.
Maxime MMontreal
The CSM course rocks! If you want to immediately jump into the action and improve as you go, this is it. You'll start off as a group of strangers, and find out how quickly you can build a high-performance team. And, if you separately want to read every comprehensive detail there is to know about scrum, Mark will share that with you too.
Nicole BVirtual
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
Using Scrum to teach Scrum. Perfect.
Andrew COttawa
Excellent! A refreshing approach! I loved the style of delivering the material and the many discussions and short exercises.
Mark APrivate Client
Instructor was extremely well prepared, know the material inside and out. Always had a good response for every question. And had a great sense of humor
Christian BPrivate Client
Amazing instructor, very clear and breaks our pre-conceived understandings.
Jean-Francois BMontreal
Mark inspired the participants to be engaged in the moment using Plato's dialogue techniques - Mark delights!
Laura DOttawa
Very knowledgeable and great communication skills to explain complex concepts in simple ways.
Ricard MToronto
Good course and instructor was great. I didn't fall asleep once.
Samsong CEdmonton
Mark was a great instructor. His quirky ways and sense of humour make for a great course. I was entertained and interested each step of the way.
Philippe BPrivate Client
Mark is a very knowledgeable and respectful instructor. He kept the information interesting and engaging, and was great at adapting the focus of the content to align with the needs of the participants. The course overall accomplished its goal of providing me with a good feel for the role of a Scrum Master.
Lisa CVirtual
Mark is an awesome instructor. A very patient instructor that welcomes all questions. He is definitely the Yoda of the Scrum universe.
Ting-Yu LToronto
This training is beneficial, now it is clear to me what sprint goals, sprint reviews and all the other terms mean and how they can be used to inform, interact and engage team members, and how to help teams become more effective and high performing. I appreciate your speech and examples you provided in class, it helps me better understand the topics. Overall, this is a great and positive training. Thanks Mark!
Alice CVirtual
Awesome work on walking us through the process.
Steven CVancouver
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
I found Mark to be engaged, upbeat, and very knowledgeable.
Peter LPrivate Client
Knows his material very well. Is pleasant. Proper course material was provided.
Jean PMontreal
Energetic. Applied scrum in practice by helping lead us to answers in many modules.
Laura LVancouver
Mark's knowledge and real world examples have cleared up my knowledge of scrum, the roles and responsibilities of the scrum team, and what I need to implement in my organization.
Greg MEdmonton
Great use of time. Very clear examples of work life situations.
Duane BToronto
Great in depth knowledge of subject matter.
Joseph COttawa
Mark is engaging, very knowledgeable and morphs to the class knowledge. His sense of humor is also appreciated.
Malisha CToronto
Very knowledgeable in what he is teaching. Passion for scrum.
Mandi AEdmonton

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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Focuses on the role of the team and the ScrumMaster. Get the skills and practical experience necessary to improve teamwork, take the exam, and advance your career with a certification that is in high demand today. Often the best fit for anyone new to Scrum.

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