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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Concepts I learned in this course are more sticky because they were demonstrated through exercise and not just explained.
Joseph MOttawa
This is my third course with Mark. I enjoy his courses and his humor. He really knows how to connect with the group. He is a wealth of knowledge related to agile and scrum and he provies a lot of great advice on how to solve our problems at work.
Shelley COttawa
Brilliant! Truly enjoyed the information and material. Instructor related well to class and provided for fantastic environment for learning. Would recommend this course and facilitator in a heart beat.
Raquel BPrivate Client
Second course with Mark went great. I have to figure out how to afford more?
David HMontreal
Very good course, well balanced and very interactive.
Alexandre GMontreal
Great course and material, I loved the theoretical information with was applied on day 2. Mark did a great job of relating everything to real work examples.
Michael FToronto
Great to get this training from the subject matter expert.
Nisha AToronto
Mark is an excellent trainer with examples and practices. Very organized and the best thing is his response to our questions with example, in addition, the amount of references that might help up improve as a scrum master.
Dona AMontreal
Mark is a very smart, passionate, knowledgable trainer, with a charismatic personality and great pedagogical skills. I see his potential to change companies culture. The course really taught me many things and made me want to read and know more!
Iulia AToronto
Course: great content! Instructor: excellent and very knowledgeable on the subject.
Nadeem FEdmonton
Mark shared valuable information and advice about Scrum theory. I am now clear on many Agile views on different aspects, especially, Roadmap.
Syed AToronto
Great course to get started. Mark is greatly knowledgeable and shares well the information.
Christine AMontreal
Overall, this was a well curated and delivered course. The instructor is SME on the subject of Scrum with lots of hands-on experiences. This helps to drive the points home to the trainees. Bravo Mark for the excellent job done.
Adefemi DVirtual
Exceptional presentation delivery that is clear, concise, and though-provoking, involving tremendous audience participation.
Norman EOttawa
Tons of material to get through, Mark did well with the contextual questions from our organization.
Brendan BPrivate Client
Great instructor with clever communication techniques to help the attendees grasp ideas.
Asad BKitchener-Waterloo
Awesome instructor and course! Will recommend!
Mikael GOttawa
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 explained things well. He's nice. There are valuable discussions during the course, that I saw others problems and experiences.
Hoo LKitchener-Waterloo
Very patient. Really liked the group activity where we had to work in Sprints on user stories.
Anita AVirtual
Training was excellent with good interaction. Knowledge sharing is good. Course was practically and informative. Mark Levison is enthusiastic with English subtle sense of humour and really aware of what he is explaining. The course helped to build confidence, valuable experiences and learning.
Yana KVirtual
Very knowledgeable and very fun and interesting way to deliver the content.
Eric SToronto
Mark did a great job teaching, providing examples, and exersises. This is my third session and I would recommend him.
Cheryl ROttawa
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
Very knowledgeable, led the session very well.
Bob BPrivate Client
Mark has been a great facilitator, instructor, and extremely knowledgeable on teaching Scrum. Great analogies and references cited.
Wilfred MPrivate Client
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
Excellent instruction with deep knowledge of scrum. All questions or clarfications were answered. Provided information I can take back to my team.
Emilia KOttawa
Mark is very engaging and keeps things interesting during the course.
Adam MToronto
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
Great agenda, engaging instructor, relevant examples and exercises. 10/10 rating
Ed AVancouver
Very informative. Well presented. Good tempo.
Robert MOttawa
I enjoyed this interactive class with Mark. So much more entertaining then watching slide after slide of a Powerpoint.
Shelley COttawa
Great course. Mark clearly knows his stuff!
Marc LOttawa
Mark is an amazing instructor-- knowledgeable, professional, but also humorous and fun. This is not one of those cookie-cutter courses, because Mark tailors the discussions to the needs of his students. It is suitable for someone new to Scrum, but also others with Scrum experience who would like to get more in-depth.
Sandy LVirtual
Mark is a very engaging instructor.
Chris PEdmonton
Good course and instructor was great. I didn't fall asleep once.
Samsong CEdmonton
Mark was engaging and patient. He got everyone involved and kept spirits and energy levels high.
David BPrivate Client
Mark is a great teacher. Funny, communicates his ideas well, very knowledgeable, - a great teacher! This was a good course!
Anthony DVirtual
Extremely enlightening. Put a lot of elements into proper context. Great foundation.
Yvan NMontreal
The course was well led, I found it very useful. Allowing the conversations to go on was nice as a lot of the issues were issues I was experiencing as well. I found Mark to be pleasant and extremely knowledgeable.
Jeff FVirtual
Mark was very knowledgeable and walked us through Scrum using the actual technique. Very good technique.
Kevin COttawa
Mark is very good. Has a lot of working experiences and real life stories.
Wilson MEdmonton
Instructor was very knowledgeable and expressed his thoughts honestly and concisely. Course was very informative.
Lorne APrivate Client
Instructor was engaging, kept the interest of the class. Nice material, I really like how we got into Scrum framework right away by using the backlog analogy for the course topics.
Cecilia OOttawa
Excellent communicator and interacts well with the class. Great knowledge of course material and a genuine advocate of Scrum.
Tony CToronto
Excellent instructor providing clear explanations. The course structure is flawless.
Benoit NMontreal
This course helped me understand the principles of Agile and how to implement it to achieve better performance with any team while having a good time. Really like the balance between the exercises and the theory.
Pierre LMontreal
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 was a great instructor with the curse of knowledge (in a good way). Detailed examples, solid application advice, and adaptable during the course. Thanks!
Nick GToronto

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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