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).
We've helped 8000+ people find success using Scrum
Proud to be the trusted training provider for many of the largest financial, insurance, software, and education organizations, as well as all levels of Canadian government.
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
Mark is a very engaging and thoughtful instructor and presented material that was relevent to the goup and our interests. This was an excellent course and worth the time commitment.
Victor COttawa
Great two days! Added new tools to my PO toolbox and Mark has inspired me again to improve as a PO and to improve my team's scrumming.
Binh HMontreal
This is my second course with Mark and it was fantastic! Mark is incredibly knowledgeable and engaging. Taking the course virtually was very smooth. I was still able to connect with some great new people while learning a ton and having fun.
Robin DVirtual
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
Masters the subject more than anyone else I've met.
Carlo DMontreal
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
Engaging. Very well explained concept. Very knowledgeable and good teaching technique in going over materials with ideas/concepts and letting us reinforce and discover in exercises.
Angela WOttawa
Mark is amazing. He is a knowledgeable instructor about scrum and I would like to attend another course with him. He taught me the basic and theories of scrum. Now i will need to integrate it with the work place. I enjoyed this course as it provided me with the concept of scrum to bring forward to my team at work.
Justin CVirtual
Mark is very easy to listen to. He is knowledgeable and keeps the class engaged. He has a lot of experience.
Lori CToronto
It's a pleasure knowing my instructor and I'm motivated to learn and read more.
Difei DToronto
Amazing! Friendly, funny, smart, open-minded individual. Great job, Mark!
S M Tadmir CToronto
Solid grounding in Scrum and examples to apply it at work.
John CVancouver
Great course! Very down to earth and humourous instructor. Would recommend to others!
Steve BKitchener-Waterloo
Instructor Mark is great and very knowledgeable, with experience that can answer questions from many industries/environments. The use of examples, games, activities are great!
Anthony KToronto
He's very knowledgable and good communication. He was able to answer any question given with complete satification
Po HPrivate Client
I enjoyed the course and the instruction. Good examples were provided. Excercises helped me understand concepts.
Claire LPrivate 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
Mark is an awesome instructor and he is very knowledgeable.
Samina CVirtual
Great course that makes you think.
Seok Woo JToronto
Appreciated the flexibility of discussing things out of order as team comments took us there. Enjoyed interactive format, no slides. Helpful workbook.
Annette GPrivate Client
Amazing instructor! Makes you feel like he knows from ages! Very interactive class.
Kaushik KVirtual
Mark did an awesome job. He is very knowledgable, helpful, and patient. I will recommend this course for sure.
Jamal EToronto
Mark was great. He definitely understands and believes in what he is teaching. He made sure to go slowly and would always check to see if we understood.
Adrien GVirtual
Extremely knowledgable on all material covered. Tons of experience and real world examples to pull from. Knowledgable on all material covered as well as periphery topics. Funny, engaging, and helped class feel they added value.
Steve DKitchener-Waterloo
Interesting approach to session - dialogue with class versus speaking to slides.
Michelina DToronto
Interesting personality and presentation style. Instructor's views align well with my own -> don't continue doing 'insane' things
Brad LEdmonton
The instructor was very good and demonstrated a clear knowledge of scrum and its principles. Hope to bring this knowledge with me into my company.
Kevin AToronto
Mark Levison is great - Excellent knowledge of the subject and a great virtual training plan. Thanks a lot.
Rajesh DVirtual
A wealth of useful and interesting knowledge.
Sarah HEdmonton
This course was an essential intro for me, a noob in Scrum. I was guided through material I need to know, while at the same time allowed to explore concepts on my own.
Vanessa MToronto
Mark was great! I found this style easy to follow and I feel prepared.
Melanie KToronto
Instructor was very invested in the material. Very knowledgeable and relatable.
Alan MEdmonton
Well structured training. Excellent communication skills.
Khaled MToronto
Instructor was informative and handled the challenges he faced well.
Ruth JPrivate Client
Awesome. Enlightment for pain points like overtime, too many WIP, motivation, etc.
Susie LVancouver
He knows his subject well! He respect the different levels of understanding of each participant. He really respect the schedule.
Julie JVirtual
I thought the instructor and course was excelelnt and very enlightening.
Aengus MEdmonton
Mark is great and the course is very valuable. I really appricate your time and patience. We covered a lot of mtaterial which is great.
William DOttawa
Good course, lots of excellent content, examples and materials. Would recommend. Mark is a good facilitator who is honest and understanding about the technical and organizational challenges.
Charles MVirtual
I find the instructor very knowledgeable and experienced in Scrum. He was very well organized and prepared for the course. He encouraged in class participation and elevated course content with real life examples. Well played! The course, its content and material covered Scrum very well.
Alena CVancouver
Mark is very knowledgeable and is great at simplifying and illustrating abstract concepts.
Thierry LMontreal
Well presented material, excellent real world examples of applying scrum framework.
Brian BOttawa
The course is great and Mark is amazing. I really impressed with his high level of knoweledge, his personal skills. I enjoyed the level how he conducted the training. The level structured and time-planned sessions. I enjoyed the way how and what Mark answered unpredictable questions. He is great facilitator.
Thanks a lot for opportunity to expand my knoweledge.
Anna MVirtual
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
True value demonstrated outside of the software development world.
Theresa BToronto
Great use of time. Very clear examples of work life situations.
Duane BToronto
The course was well structured. The trainer was very knowledgeable and very engaging. I thoroughly enjoyed this course.
Bruno MOttawa
Knowledgeable, prepared, interactive.
Anca MMontreal
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
Engaging. Very well explained concept. Very knowledgeable and good teaching technique in going over materials with ideas/concepts and letting us reinforce and discover in exercises.
Angela WOttawa
Mark is amazing. He is a knowledgeable instructor about scrum and I would like to attend another course with him. He taught me the basic and theories of scrum. Now i will need to integrate it with the work place. I enjoyed this course as it provided me with the concept of scrum to bring forward to my team at work.
Justin CVirtual
Mark is very easy to listen to. He is knowledgeable and keeps the class engaged. He has a lot of experience.
Lori CToronto
It's a pleasure knowing my instructor and I'm motivated to learn and read more.
Difei DToronto
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
Amazing! Friendly, funny, smart, open-minded individual. Great job, Mark!
S M Tadmir CToronto
Solid grounding in Scrum and examples to apply it at work.
John CVancouver
Great course! Very down to earth and humourous instructor. Would recommend to others!
Steve BKitchener-Waterloo
Instructor Mark is great and very knowledgeable, with experience that can answer questions from many industries/environments. The use of examples, games, activities are great!
Anthony KToronto
He's very knowledgable and good communication. He was able to answer any question given with complete satification
Po HPrivate Client
I enjoyed the course and the instruction. Good examples were provided. Excercises helped me understand concepts.
Claire LPrivate Client
Mark is a very engaging and thoughtful instructor and presented material that was relevent to the goup and our interests. This was an excellent course and worth the time commitment.
Victor COttawa
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
Mark is an awesome instructor and he is very knowledgeable.
Samina CVirtual
Great course that makes you think.
Seok Woo JToronto
Great two days! Added new tools to my PO toolbox and Mark has inspired me again to improve as a PO and to improve my team's scrumming.
Binh HMontreal
Appreciated the flexibility of discussing things out of order as team comments took us there. Enjoyed interactive format, no slides. Helpful workbook.
Annette GPrivate Client
This is my second course with Mark and it was fantastic! Mark is incredibly knowledgeable and engaging. Taking the course virtually was very smooth. I was still able to connect with some great new people while learning a ton and having fun.
Robin DVirtual
Amazing instructor! Makes you feel like he knows from ages! Very interactive class.
Kaushik KVirtual
Mark did an awesome job. He is very knowledgable, helpful, and patient. I will recommend this course for sure.
Jamal EToronto
Mark was great. He definitely understands and believes in what he is teaching. He made sure to go slowly and would always check to see if we understood.
Adrien GVirtual
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
Extremely knowledgable on all material covered. Tons of experience and real world examples to pull from. Knowledgable on all material covered as well as periphery topics. Funny, engaging, and helped class feel they added value.
Steve DKitchener-Waterloo
Interesting approach to session - dialogue with class versus speaking to slides.
Michelina DToronto
Interesting personality and presentation style. Instructor's views align well with my own -> don't continue doing 'insane' things
Brad LEdmonton
The instructor was very good and demonstrated a clear knowledge of scrum and its principles. Hope to bring this knowledge with me into my company.
Kevin AToronto
Mark Levison is great - Excellent knowledge of the subject and a great virtual training plan. Thanks a lot.
Rajesh DVirtual
A wealth of useful and interesting knowledge.
Sarah HEdmonton
This course was an essential intro for me, a noob in Scrum. I was guided through material I need to know, while at the same time allowed to explore concepts on my own.
Vanessa MToronto
Mark was great! I found this style easy to follow and I feel prepared.
Melanie KToronto
Instructor was very invested in the material. Very knowledgeable and relatable.
Alan MEdmonton
Well structured training. Excellent communication skills.
Khaled MToronto
Instructor was informative and handled the challenges he faced well.
Ruth JPrivate Client
Awesome. Enlightment for pain points like overtime, too many WIP, motivation, etc.
Susie LVancouver
He knows his subject well! He respect the different levels of understanding of each participant. He really respect the schedule.
Julie JVirtual
I thought the instructor and course was excelelnt and very enlightening.
Aengus MEdmonton
Mark is great and the course is very valuable. I really appricate your time and patience. We covered a lot of mtaterial which is great.
William DOttawa
Good course, lots of excellent content, examples and materials. Would recommend. Mark is a good facilitator who is honest and understanding about the technical and organizational challenges.
Charles MVirtual
Masters the subject more than anyone else I've met.
Carlo DMontreal
I find the instructor very knowledgeable and experienced in Scrum. He was very well organized and prepared for the course. He encouraged in class participation and elevated course content with real life examples. Well played! The course, its content and material covered Scrum very well.
Alena CVancouver
Mark is very knowledgeable and is great at simplifying and illustrating abstract concepts.
Thierry LMontreal
Well presented material, excellent real world examples of applying scrum framework.
Brian BOttawa
The course is great and Mark is amazing. I really impressed with his high level of knoweledge, his personal skills. I enjoyed the level how he conducted the training. The level structured and time-planned sessions. I enjoyed the way how and what Mark answered unpredictable questions. He is great facilitator.
Thanks a lot for opportunity to expand my knoweledge.
Anna MVirtual
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
True value demonstrated outside of the software development world.
Theresa BToronto
Great use of time. Very clear examples of work life situations.
Duane BToronto
The course was well structured. The trainer was very knowledgeable and very engaging. I thoroughly enjoyed this course.
Bruno MOttawa
Knowledgeable, prepared, interactive.
Anca MMontreal
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 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
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.
Get Certified
Explore what Scrum is and how to make it work for you in our Scrum Certification training. Hands-on learning will guide you to improve teamwork, deliver quick feedback, and achieve better products and results.
Registration is now open for workshops:
About this course
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.
Learning and Benefits
Relatable Scenarios
Learn on-the-job applications of key Scrum concepts, skills, principles, along with practical solutions that you can apply the next day for difficult, real-life situations.
Respected Certification
Everything you need to earn your Scrum Alliance® ScrumMaster certification, including exam fee and membership, and so much more.
Practical Exercises
With focus on the challenges that real teams face, and tools to dig deeper. You don’t need more boring Scrum theory. You need something you can sink your teeth into to see immediate results.
Jargon-Free Learning
This workshop is not just for software development or people with a computer science degree. We’ve helped many non-software teams with Scrum.
Career Advancement
Use Scrum knowledge to standout at work, get paid more, and impress your customer, all without burning out.
GenAI for Systems Thinking
Learn the basics of using Generative AI as a tool to support Systems Thinking in your ScrumMaster role. Explore how to leverage GenAI to help uncover patterns, and think more deeply about the systems your team operates in.
Ongoing Support
Your learning doesn’t stop when the workshop ends. You get lifetime access to all course materials, plus a followup email series designed to reinforce your learning objectives and help you apply what you’ve learned on the job.