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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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
Going into this training course my expectation was between boring and somewhat engaging as per my previous experience with training. I was pleasantly surprised. I found Mark entertaining and the course material laid out in a way as to keep the class engaged and interactive at all times. Well done. Will not hesitate to recommend your class(es) to anyone.
Jean-Michel HOttawa
I enjoyed the course and the instruction. Good examples were provided. Excercises helped me understand concepts.
Claire LPrivate Client
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
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 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
Instructor was excellent. Provided an environment of communication.
Nathalile LOttawa
Loved this course! Mark is very thorough and attentive as a teacher. He leveraged Mural in such interactive ways, which allowed him to understand the students well and shape the class accordingly. He is like the Jedi master of scrum and insanely advanced methods of leaderless collaboration and accomplishment. He's also the king of super nerdy jokes, which made the class fun and brought out the super nerd in everyone.
Lia GVirtual
Mark made the class enjoyable. I was initially dreading a 3 day course. After the first day I knew that I could live through the course.
Dickie BPrivate Client
Mark is extremely knowlegeable, humorous, and an effective teacher. I feel far more knowedgeable about Scrum now than I did 2 days ago.
Jeremy GToronto
Great course! I will recommend this to others.
Darryl EVancouver
Instructor was informative and handled the challenges he faced well.
Ruth JPrivate Client
Mark is an awesome instructor and has great patience dealing with attendees virtually. His knowledge is spot on and he tries to answer all the questions given the time constraint.
Harjot DVirtual
Mark has good mastering on the topic, keeps the audience engaged, and effectively delivers the material to get the job done.
David KEdmonton
Mark was great !! Very thorough - his passion for what he does came through. I appreciated his organization and engagement with the team. He was awesome.
Rene EVirtual
This was a very illuminating overview of Scrum roles and best practices, taught by a very engaging instructor.
Douglas GPrivate Client
Mark was an excellent instructor, with a sense of humour that helped keep my focus (which is particularly challenging with the course being online over 3 days). Being able to run through simulated sprints to help reinforce the material was very helpful.
Micheal CVirtual
Mark was a very thoughtful and direct instructor.
Luke GVirtual
Very interactive. Even though I was jet-lagged and sick, I enjoyed the class and did not fall asleep.
Negar HToronto
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
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
Engaging instructor, keeps it interesting.
Yves GMontreal
I greatly enjoyed Mark's class. He is obviously a subject matter expert and has great insights.
Mandana BVirtual
Very good introduction to my new role. Mark leads lively and thought-provoking discussions.
Bob COttawa
The course and instructor was excellent. The concepts were clearly communicated.
Edmund CEdmonton
Mark is a very clear and engaging instructor. He is able to use examples and exercises to ground our learning.
Ayesha KOttawa
Mark delivered what I think is one of the best adult learning, in a corporate training environment, I’ve experienced. And it was remote! It was engaging, entertaining and very useful. I was also very fortunate to have a great team which significantly enriched my experience.
Noah CVirtual
Very passionate and organized, kept material interesting.
Sjoerd FEdmonton
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
Great conversations. Thanks, Mark! My confidence in understanding the role increased!
Orville HEdmonton
Very well structured course with a good variety of topics for further research. Great interaction with class.
Yuri AVirtual
Mark was incredibly knowledge and experienced and it's very apparent. I learned more than I could have expected. I greatly appreciate all the additional reading materials. I would have never been able to collect such a library on my own and I have a fascination for good leadership and developing high performing teams.
Anly HOttawa
Very well presented to the needs of the students. Adapts to the questions and situations very well. Like real life examples encouraged discussion.
Hoyt LPrivate Client
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
Very knowledgeable and pleasant to work with.
Kristian BEdmonton
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
Great. Very detailed. Class very interesting, very good relating questions with good examples.
Yong FToronto
Mark delivered an excellent course, it was a value-packed 2 days.
Brent COttawa
This course gave me a new insight into delivering better software for the customer more effectively.
Len CVancouver
Excellent! Packed in a lot in the limited time without making it overwhelmning.
Ayan KMontreal
Mark knows this content, kept us engaged and provided hands-on workshop tasks to understand the conent. Fantastic approach to this course with backlog and Sprints. Stories and answering questions of the group was appreciated.
Matt FPrivate Client
Mark is great, crams a boat load into two days effectively.
Gordon IVirtual
Great course that makes you think.
Seok Woo JToronto
Mark made a challenging and complex process (Scrum) very clear and highlighted the benefits and opportunities in an engaging and entertaining way.
Jeremy GVancouver
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
There is so much about Scrum that I didn't know I didn't know! Thanks Mark for an informative and engaging 2 days.
Dan LKitchener-Waterloo
I appreciate the opportunity to attend the workshop. I enjoyed the time spent with my fellow co-workers to learn together. Mark is passionate about Scrum and willing to dig into our problem and seek for the remedies to resolve.
Heather JVancouver
This course was a rapid-fire immersion into the world of scrum. As such, it provides a grounding for us to start on the journey to becoming a good scrummaster.
Steve HToronto
Amazing experience. Mark is a great inspirational mentor. Teaches me how to approach problems and think out of the box.
Ben HKitchener-Waterloo
Instructor is knowledgeable and also a good instructor (you don't always get both!) Course was well done with enough 'meat' to enable students to implement core concepts without overwhelming.
Cassandra HEdmonton

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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Use Scrum knowledge to standout at work, get paid more, and impress your customer, all without burning out.

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