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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Interesting facilitation of a topic that could have been not so interesting.
Jeff MEdmonton
Very helpful for our specific problems. Excellent responding to questions with good examples. Sense of humour. Fun but thorough course.
Tina SPrivate Client
Very knowledgeable and had many keen insights on the human behaviour aspect of scrum.
Brent ZVancouver
Mark Levison was a great and engaging instructor! His interactive style of presenting helped me stay engaged during the 2 days of the training.
Olivier TVirtual
Mark was great at adapting to our needs - how very agile!
Mika TPrivate Client
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
The course itself is a great introduction to the Scrum Master role. It starts with the fundamentals and advances through a successful balance of instruction and interactive exercises. Our instructor - Mark Levison - is obviously an expert in his field and passionate about the subject. He displayed great skill in getting his message across to his students and also in keeping us interested and involved throughout the three day course.
Sean SVirtual
Very good two days with excellent discussions. Mark was very adept at provoking these discussions.
Richard MOttawa
The instructor keeps you engaged through the use of his mannerisms, stories, and body language.
Sherry PPrivate Client
Mark provided down-to-earth help in scrum masters to untangle their own problems.
Herb VToronto
This is one of the best courses I took. I liked the 'hands on' scrum technique. I liked the open discussions and how the instructor motivated people and kept them engaged.
Magda SOttawa
Great training with an engaging trainer and hands on practice. The content made you think about the best solutions and how to prioritize workflow. The instructor provided tangible guidance on best practices.
Sneha NVirtual
Excellent! I really enjoyed the course and I learned more than I was expecting to.
Dave VToronto
Great course. I learned enough to get me started doing Scrum. The instructor really knows the content and made pleasant and dynamic the delivery.
Carlos MPrivate Client
Mark is an engaging instructor using conversation and interaction as the engagement catalyst!
Shawn RToronto
I like the tone and pace of the training most.
Alex VEdmonton
Instructor was great, would continue the engaging exercises and involving people in the room.
Hussein RToronto
I applaud Mark's view on working in agile. I was able to clearly understand the fundamental core and roles of agile.
Adil SOttawa
Great class, Very interactive!
Mika TPrivate Client
Instructor was excellent. Provided an environment of communication.
Nathalile LOttawa
Very helpful and clear. Mark is good at pushing the boundary with good illustration.
Terry NToronto
Mark was very engaging and provides an excellent overview of the Scrum methodology.
Stephane LEdmonton
Really liked it, will recommend to others.
Alexey SToronto
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
Very enthusiastic and diplomatic. Very knowledgeable. Course was enjoyable.
Chris MKitchener-Waterloo
Great course - certainly lived up to its reputation.
Ryann MKitchener-Waterloo
All topics were covered and mastered incredibly well. Could confirm his wide knowledge and experience using and explaining scrum.
Lenin QMontreal
I found Mark very knowledgeable for the course material and good at getting his point across.
Shawn PMontreal
The instructor and the course both were awesome.
Rajeev RToronto
Excellent instructor and very knowledgeable. I feel much more prepared for a process that I am already a part of.
Shamir REdmonton
Mark is quite knowledgable about the subject. A good collaborative style was used so I can learn everyone's views and share what I could gather.
Sriprasadh ROttawa
Energetic, clear, helpful, inspiring, a great teacher.
Nadil POttawa
Mark clearly articulated the value of Scrum and Agile. He was able to distill to the appropriate level for the audience.
Dave VKitchener-Waterloo
Mark is excellent. Made the course very helpful!
Stan TVancouver
Mark is incredibly knowledgeable. He has learned through pratice and epierences and knows how to leverage SCRUM effectively.
Travis RPrivate Client
I really appreciated the experience as a whole. Great valuable content. Super trainer. Experienced and flexible.
Marie MOttawa
The course was very relevant. The instructor has good insight and was able to address questions.
Jeyasandhya RToronto
The class is not boring. Time went by quickly. I really enjoyed your class. I now have a starting point.
Katerina TOttawa
Mark knows his stuff. Great leader. Looking forward to reading his blog.
Brian RToronto
Solid course, instructor was knowledgeable and friendly. I liked how it felt like a conversation and not a presentation, so I had pretty high engagement.This subject feels like an applied art, not a list of facts for memorization.
Michael RVirtual
Mark you are a rockstar and I truly enjoyed and hopefully benefit.
Kerry OPrivate Client
I really appreciated the workshop environment where all participants were willing to share perspectives and answer questions. Again, the breakout sessions and exercises were amazing in practicing and understanding Scrum events. Kudos.
Davide VVirtual
Very knowledgeable, enjoy the practical examples that were shared.
Tina MEdmonton
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
Enjoyed and learned much more than expected out of a two day course.
Ian MOttawa
Mark was great! He's very knowledgeable and his understand of SCRUM is deep and polished. I enjoyed the product owner course.
Joe OEdmonton
Mark is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable instructor. The 2-day course was exceptionally well facilitated. He is passionate about teaching and how people learn, and it shows in the delivery methods and techniques used throughout class to engage students
Simona TVirtual
Great use of time. Very clear examples of work life situations.
Duane BToronto
Excellent, great management of large group, Excellent information
Susan LPrivate Client
Mark is very knowledgeable and willing to provide strategic guidance above and beyond strict training material. Well humoured and effective, good mix of depth and breadth.
Julian RPrivate Client

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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