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 did an excellent job of teaching the material and went beyond just presenting it.
Noah AEdmonton
Mark is very knowledgeable and his experience with Agile and Scrum was awesome as he was able to provide lots of tips and examples.
Sophie CVirtual
Instructor is super knowledgeable and shared his wealth of expertise in a meaning manner.
Randy GPrivate Client
Mark was fantastic. Enjoyed his coaching very well. Course was very interesting.
Robert AOttawa
Mark did an excellent job running the course. Explanations were clear and he was open to all questions.
Michael DToronto
The instructor is well-versed in the material covered and was able to relate it to our issues without telling us how to do it. For a short course we covered a lot of ground, but I did not feel overwhelmed.
Wayne PPrivate Client
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
No nonsense, practical approach, dynamic, very instructive.
Yanick BMontreal
It's a pleasure knowing my instructor and I'm motivated to learn and read more.
Difei DToronto
Mark inspired the participants to be engaged in the moment using Plato's dialogue techniques - Mark delights!
Laura DOttawa
Very good presentation skills. Excellent materials for study (in class and via email). Good tips and pragmatic approach. Good experience and info from the trenches.
Luiza DToronto
The course was awesome with great instructor. It was great to have the groups for exercices and then discuss with trainer.
Françoise DVirtual
Marks experience and depth of knowledge made the detailed examples easy to relate to.
Pralaya SEdmonton
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
Instructor is very knowledgeable, approachable and fun which aids learning.
Kevin MOttawa
Great course! Very engaging and knowlegeable instructor.
Kolin BOttawa
Very knowledgeable teacher with tons of examples and real life stories.
Alex BMontreal
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
Very knowledgable and lots of references. Puts things into context and gives lots of examples to relate to many businesses.
Brent MEdmonton
Great instructor - very clear and easy to follow. Makes you think.
Linda LOttawa
Mark's teaching methods make the course fly and help the information stick. He gives a clear understanding of the theory of agile/scrum and real world application tips so students can apply scrum immediately and successfully.
Anne MOttawa
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 smart and knowledgeable about not only Scrum but also Agile practices. Didn't mince words and instilled confidence in us that we could make his advice work for us.
Simon LOttawa
Great use of time. Very clear examples of work life situations.
Duane BToronto
Mark is a wonderful, energetic instructer who helps you to evaluate how you are working in your own environment. Then he helps you to figure out how to improve it.
Shelley COttawa
To the point and with passion!
Colin MToronto
Mark is obviously very invested in the material. I never doubted that he was an expert with a lot of industry experience.
Devin ROttawa
Excellent course! Not a wasted minute!
John MOttawa
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
Thank you Mark for the amazing training and for the useful tips you shared!
Manal DVirtual
Awesome work on walking us through the process.
Steven CVancouver
I enjoyed having Mark as an instructor, he is knowledgeable on the topic, provided easy to follow examples, and has a good sense of humour. I liked how he took notes on questions people had, provided a brief answer and then provided links after the workshop so that we could follow up on the topics that interest us. The 10 min sanity breaks that he gave every hour were great as it allowed my brain to relax and then come back and focus. I really enjoyed the course, I learned lots over the 2 day workshop. I feel like 2 days might be a bit short for the course as I would have enjoyed another day of the course to learn more and refine my skills. I would recommend this course to anyone new to the scrum master role or interested in learning about scrum as it gives you a great base that you can expand.
Christopher MVirtual
Class was fun and instructive. Mark was a great help, understanding and pushed our creative thinking and problems solving abilities further. Thank you!
Caroline DMontreal
Amazing course! Love every second of it. Mark kept us all engaged. I knew nothing about agile/scrum and now feel well equipped to make changes at work. I'd love for the rest of my team to attend.
Shravan COttawa
Mark is an extremely knowledgeable Scrum practitioner and a great coach! He gave each of the participants clear and useful answers to the questions we had during the training, whether the questions were about the material or from work experiences, and helped us figure out how to handle situations on our own. This is the first time I take an agile training that gives me clarity about ways of improving how I work with my team
Martha BVirtual
The instructor keeps you engaged through the use of his mannerisms, stories, and body language.
Sherry PPrivate Client
Mark is incredibly well prepared and professional. Best instructor I've ever had, period.
Kevin DKitchener-Waterloo
Very good and useful information. I like the format (no boring Powerpoint) and doing the meeting as a sprint was great.
Fred BPrivate Client
The course and instructor were dynamic and engaging and open to a variety of participants.
Daniel RMontreal
Instructor is very knowledgeable and delivers the course extremely well. Makes it interesting!
Brian APrivate Client
I really liked the course and the way it's presented. It was one of the best courses I've took.
Afshin ROttawa
Mark was extremely knowledgeable, effective teacher, responded well to students and has an excellent sense of humour.
Kely BVancouver
Mark was very entertaining, which made what I expected to be a boring two days very enjoyable, while still learning.
Zach BKitchener-Waterloo
Mark is simply a very knowledgeable and engaging instructor. Great experience.
Emad MPrivate Client
This course was one of the best I have experienced, because we did everything instead of listening to someone talk.
Doris PPrivate Client
Fantastic instructor. Great real story examples.
Allan CEdmonton
Instructor was very well connected with the teams. Immense knowledge on Agile and Scrum.
Deepa MOttawa
Mark is very knowledgeable and really challenges the class to engage, speak, think about the core concepts, even when it’s messy/unclear in “real world” situations. I talked to a couple of my colleagues afterward and even the ones who were having difficulty with the usefulness of Scrum in their professional lives really enjoyed the course and the instructor, myself included.
Louis BVirtual
Time master- thank you for pushing us through topics. Honestly - stated that you can provide examples, up to us to decide.
Tracey OToronto
Mark was amazing and held my attention throughout both days. Very relatable scenarios in real world.
Jerry HKitchener-Waterloo

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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