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 is incredibly knowledgeable. He has learned through pratice and epierences and knows how to leverage SCRUM effectively.
Travis RPrivate Client
Made me THINK!!! Provided Framework
Mike CPrivate Client
Mark was very knowledgeable; I really appreciated the examples that he shared with the group. Thank you!
Suzanne AVirtual
Mark was fantastic! He explained the concepts very clearly and kept the class very engaging for the 2 days. He has a wealth of experience and was able to convey that to the class (plus the fun soap box moments).
Anthony GVirtual
Mark is a great instructor, we can see the vast experience that he has from his training style. We have learnt as much as it is possible from a two day workshop. Keep up the good work Mark.
Sreepad KVirtual
Mark is an awesome instructor who does an excellent job of describing Scrum. Brilliant course!
Tom BEdmonton
Thanks for being so responsive and Agile in your approach to leading the class.
Deb BKitchener-Waterloo
This was agreat intro to formal scrum fundamentals. Mark was always engaging.
John LKitchener-Waterloo
Classes with Mark was so worthwhile! Mark has an amazing way of breaking things down so that they are understandable, and always keeping it light and fun. Overall, the course is well designed, and the topics were engaging and useful.
Mohamad AVirtual
Very good and useful information. I like the format (no boring Powerpoint) and doing the meeting as a sprint was great.
Fred BPrivate Client
Great use of time. Very clear examples of work life situations.
Duane BToronto
Excellent! A refreshing approach! I loved the style of delivering the material and the many discussions and short exercises.
Mark APrivate Client
Very engaging, interactive and lively CSPO virtual workshop. Mark is an excellent instructor and provided a lot of real world examples to help with understanding. Thank you for coaching. I will definitely recommend this course.
Cindy LVirtual
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
I greatly enjoyed Mark's class. He is obviously a subject matter expert and has great insights.
Mandana BVirtual
Knows his stuff. Has a lot of industries "real life" examples that help us understand those Agile methodologies.
Isabelle LMontreal
Instructor kept the course interested, kept us engaged through fun exercises. I love the course content, the book. Well prepared reference.
Hulya AOttawa
Really appreciated how he addressed our questions and gave feedback. Mark was very knowledgable on the subject matter.
Kyle AOttawa
Mark is a patient and very organized coach. I appreciate the ability to get through so much information in only 2 days. Mark really focuses on what one needs to have a better understand of scrum and it's benefits.
Brian AVirtual
It was a pleasure learning with Mark. The scrum-like structure of the course made it interactive and fun.
Florent GToronto
Excellent course, very knowledgeable instructor. Will highly recomment the product owner course.
Florentino LPrivate Client
Great course. Information overload but not in a bad way. I liked that we discussed specific corporate problems people were having. Helped build context in how others are using Agile/Scrum. Maybe misusing, too.
Tyler BVancouver
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
Good. Has lots of experience.
Jimmy AEdmonton
Instructor is very knowledgeable and delivers the course extremely well. Makes it interesting!
Brian APrivate Client
Awesome, good humour and very knowledgeable about side elements and how they come into play.
Daniel LOttawa
Instructor very knowledgeable, supportive, and a great coach.
Jay BVancouver
Interesting approach to session - dialogue with class versus speaking to slides.
Michelina DToronto
The course was well organizated and presented but the real value comes in the form of the facilitator Mark. His knowledge, enthusiasm and ability to help you find our own answers was refreshing, Thank you Mark!
James BOttawa
Very engaging instructor and scenarios.
Christine APrivate Client
Hands on experience in the subject helps to communicate most of the inportant message throughout the course.
Wael FToronto
A great course for those who wish to change their conventional PM perspective to a more open and agile one.
Catherine HMontreal
The course was well laid out, a good mix of discussions, examples, and practice.
Chris FToronto
Great course! I will recommend this to others.
Darryl EVancouver
The instructor Mark was very knowledgeable and provided lots of knowledge and examples. I learned a lot but did not realize what a huge topic this is.
Andrei DToronto
Mark explained things well. He's nice. There are valuable discussions during the course, that I saw others problems and experiences.
Hoo LKitchener-Waterloo
Mark, you're awesome! Certainly one of the best instructors I've had the pleasure of learning from. The course is absolutely helpful in building good foundational knowledge of scrum and especially the scrum master role.
Debbie LToronto
I participated in the Certified Scrum Master course instructed by Mark Levison. Mark is a very well educated in the Agile Scrum methodology and presented the course material in a very entertaining way during the 2-day course. I learned a lot of things I had not previously known even though I had been practicing scrum for the past 5 years. I would highly recommend that every organization send their scrum focal’s to this training – it will help them advance their organization in implementing, and delivering scrum based projects, thus help their business be more successful.
Graham FVirtual
Mark is an awesome instructor! The course was very valuable and useful.
Chandni LToronto
Great course! Very down to earth and humourous instructor. Would recommend to others!
Steve BKitchener-Waterloo
Good course and instructor was great. I didn't fall asleep once.
Samsong CEdmonton
Mark is a very engaging instructor.
Chris PEdmonton
Mark's facilitation style was extremly engaging and his knowledge deep. I like the way he builds the scrum framework into the training workshop agenda. No power point, lots of discussion and releveant examples. I appreciate very much the time Mark took to address my question for which he had no existing reference.
Renee OKitchener-Waterloo
Excellent instructor provided engaging activites to help roleplay learning and provoke meaningful discussions.
Alice PEdmonton
Great energy. Made the day pass with a mix of humour and data.
Matthew COttawa
Mark is totally wonderfully weird and knowledgeable.
Sarah MOttawa
I was impressed. The most valuable thing was not the principles (already knew most intellectually) but the instructor's zen master answers to challnges/questions. This aided in more intutive knowledge.
David AEdmonton
Lively, hands on, enlightening. Would recommend.
Allen NEdmonton
Energetic. Applied scrum in practice by helping lead us to answers in many modules.
Laura LVancouver
Mark is simply a very knowledgeable and engaging instructor. Great experience.
Emad MPrivate 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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