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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Very good experience, learned a lot, will be able to apply what I have learned, good job.
David KEdmonton
This course has challenged me to take little steps within my tasks to be an effective team player. I also feel that the little tips and techniques will help me produce better quality in my projects. Enjoyed the use of SCRUM to conduct the training seminar and the group exercises or techniques presented because I felt engaged and they foster group participation.
Sally CVancouver
Mark is great, crams a boat load into two days effectively.
Gordon IVirtual
My success criteria for the course were met by Mark's thoughtful responses to my in-class questions. I enjoyed interacting with the other course participants on the Mural platform.
Lydia CVirtual
Great course to get started. Mark is greatly knowledgeable and shares well the information.
Christine AMontreal
Excellent. Learn a lot about Scrum. Very knowledgeable and experienced in the area. Able to relate different examples on questions asked during class.
Robert CToronto
Mark did an awesome job. He is very knowledgable, helpful, and patient. I will recommend this course for sure.
Jamal EToronto
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Mark. I learned a lot and appreciate his teaching style.
Kendall APrivate Client
Very good introduction to my new role. Mark leads lively and thought-provoking discussions.
Bob COttawa
Mark was great. He definitely understands and believes in what he is teaching. He made sure to go slowly and would always check to see if we understood.
Adrien GVirtual
Long days but really challenged me to rethink how I can enhance my BA skills and how to contribute in different ways to my team.
Pearline EVancouver
Mark's enthusiam was contagious. His energy and humor brought Scrum alive! I enjoyed the examples and many aspects we covered.
Michelle HKitchener-Waterloo
Instructor is very knowledgeable and delivers the course extremely well. Makes it interesting!
Brian APrivate Client
Excellent!! Thoughtful, well presented and very enthusiastic. Lots of great information packed into a concise program.
Rolland CKitchener-Waterloo
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
Great agenda, engaging instructor, relevant examples and exercises. 10/10 rating
Ed AVancouver
Passionate, Articulate, Well organized, and knowledgeable. Highly recommended
Nick KVancouver
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
Instructor was very engaging, but also shared valuable insight that will help me succeed.
Morgan TPrivate Client
Awesome. Enlightment for pain points like overtime, too many WIP, motivation, etc.
Susie LVancouver
Well presented material, excellent real world examples of applying scrum framework.
Brian BOttawa
This is an excellent course to take after the CSM. The instructor was excellent, the course was wonderful, the students awesome.
Marc HMontreal
Great instructor, great technique using Scrum to learn.
Jen MToronto
Good course and instructor was great. I didn't fall asleep once.
Samsong CEdmonton
Time master- thank you for pushing us through topics. Honestly - stated that you can provide examples, up to us to decide.
Tracey OToronto
Mark is amazing. He is a knowledgeable instructor about scrum and I would like to attend another course with him. He taught me the basic and theories of scrum. Now i will need to integrate it with the work place. I enjoyed this course as it provided me with the concept of scrum to bring forward to my team at work.
Justin CVirtual
Mark did a great job. I appreciated that a) he was coming from a strong development background and b) had an obvious passion about Scrum and the benefits it could bring to development.
Adam MVirtual
Mark was good - foundatian of knowledge and his experiences made for good practical examples.
Mike AMontreal
Mark is an excellent instructor with lots of experience-based knowledge. He goes beyond teaching the basics by applying, and letting us apply, the knowledge to real world example.
Ettore CMontreal
Thank you. It has been one of the most interesting courses I have attended.
Hemant KToronto
Fantastic overview of everything PO, Agile, Scrum. Learning how to manage and maintain a collaborative product backlog will be so valuable.
Elizabeth MPrivate Client
Highly recommend it. This was awesome. Thank you. Mark is a very good instructor.
Philippe CMontreal
Mark was very good. I appreciated that he was able to provide good examples and explain concepts clearly.
Valerie EVancouver
The instructor was very good and demonstrated a clear knowledge of scrum and its principles. Hope to bring this knowledge with me into my company.
Kevin AToronto
Mark is a great instructor! He is knowledgeable and has experience, so he knows what he is talking about! Highly suggest his course!
Anthony MVirtual
Excellent. Taught and gave a great understanding of Scrum.
Cameron MEdmonton
Mark was fantastic! Great examples!
Scott MKitchener-Waterloo
This instructor was absolutely brilliant. He was very clear and knowlegable in all the areas. He was also very honest in his opinions.
Jonathan EOttawa
You have a deep understanding of the Scrum methodology. You are good listener and you are able to adapt to your audience. I am really satisfied and will recommend you.
Eric LMontreal
Mark is very knowledgeable and is great at simplifying and illustrating abstract concepts.
Thierry LMontreal
Mark was very personable and knowledgeable about the subject. Nothing threw him.
Sharon GPrivate Client
Very knowledgeable and great communication skills to explain complex concepts in simple ways.
Ricard MToronto
Excellent course, very knowledgeable instructor. Will highly recomment the product owner course.
Florentino LPrivate Client
Intense and totally worth it.
Marinho MEdmonton
Very much appreciated the training material as it has direct implication in our project methodologies.
Mizan CMontreal
Mark was very engaging, and his training session helped to increase my knowledge of Agile and Scrum.
Tiffany MToronto
Very good two days with excellent discussions. Mark was very adept at provoking these discussions.
Richard MOttawa
Passionate and knowledgeable!
Derek LVancouver
Very useful take on scrum, focused on the prod owners needs and responsibilities. Practical tools to start and plenty of other sources of info to continue growing.
Paula MToronto
It has been a long time where 5 days of work didn't feel like 5 days. The course was so fun, I really enjoyed coming into work.
Cong LVancouver

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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