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 has a very engaging style of delivering content and making learning fun peppered with real life examples.
Anurag TOttawa
Mark was very engaging, and his training session helped to increase my knowledge of Agile and Scrum.
Tiffany MToronto
Mark is a great teacher and is very good at engaging people. Really gets the spark going!
Julien LMontreal
Mark Levison was very effective in delivering the material for the class. He kept it interesting and interactive even though this was an online course.
Marie LVirtual
Fantastic course. I was really happy with the structure, the breaks, and the group interaction. I've taken other online courses like this before and really felt like there was a good balance between listening, discussions, applying the knowledge, and pauses.
Amanda PVirtual
Mark was a good speaker and resourceful instructor. Exercises were practical and useful.
Ronald MPrivate Client
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
Was very fun and good flow, not by the book provided but with sharing real-life examples and his previous experience. Very appreciated!
Kevin LToronto
Course gave me clarity on the basic principles of Scrum. Drove home the power of 'team'.
Lia PToronto
This course was exactly what I was looking for! Mark was a very knowledgeable and engaging instructor. I appreciated the hands-on exercises that allowed me to put the methodology into practice with my course mates and learn from the experience. The course material is also top notch. I feel ready to take the exam and put what I've learnt into practice in my workplace.
Anu PVirtual
Mark and the course were able to give me a lot of different perspectives on how scrum can be applied. Mark is very knowledgable and has tech background [which] helped myself as we knew the sector better.
Nicholas LOttawa
A good introduction about scrum, roles of PO, SM and team. Opened up my thoughts on how it could be applied/practiced effectively and efficiently to build a good team.
Rajesh MOttawa
Course was excellent, wealth of information. Mark is very knowledgable, pace was good, clear and concise, appreciated his sense of humour.
Kevin PEdmonton
Mark was excellent! He is a very efficient communicator. Concise in the material he presents. The pace was great. I love the fact that scrum fundamentals were demonstrable.
Omesh MToronto
Interesting facilitation of a topic that could have been not so interesting.
Jeff MEdmonton
Excellent instructor provided engaging activites to help roleplay learning and provoke meaningful discussions.
Alice PEdmonton
Really dynamic! Use scrum tools to control the flow of the course which is a good example.
Marc LMontreal
Well prepared. Knowledgeable on and passionate about the subject matter. The virtual course functioned equally well as the in-class course.
Lin-Mari LVirtual
Mark thanks for sharing your knowledge. I truly enjoyed your course. You have a great teaching ability.
Anaya MOttawa
Mark uses his extensive experience in scrum training and software dev to add relevent examples which help understand SCRUM better.
Affan MPrivate Client
Tons of material to get through, Mark did well with the contextual questions from our organization.
Brendan BPrivate Client
Mark is a very engaging instructor. He combines his scrum master knowledge with humour and demontrates both in real situations. He has inspired me through this course to be a great scrum master!
Lisa MToronto
Very engaging instructor. Used many real-life examples.
Laura OPrivate Client
Awesome, good humour and very knowledgeable about side elements and how they come into play.
Daniel LOttawa
Course was informative and entertaining. There was good participant involvement and useful examples.
George COttawa
Mark was highly engaged and collaborative with the class. Helped reinforce my understanding of Scrum and educate me on best practices and tools I can utilize in my work.
Faisal MToronto
I thought the overall course material was excellent and was well present by a very dynamic and thoughful instructor.
Austin DOttawa
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
He's very knowledgable and good communication. He was able to answer any question given with complete satification
Po HPrivate Client
Very interesting course, useful information, good class structure and handouts.
Jialin MPrivate Client
He is funny. And smart. And a good storyteller. All together = great combo.
Melanie HEdmonton
Mark was fantastic and the course was a great!
Henry MVirtual
Good course and Mark is an awesome facilitator. Loved the way Mark conducted the training.
Gajan PKitchener-Waterloo
Mark was a great instructor! Very enthusiastic about the course and assisting its participants in becoming successful product owners. Incredibly knowledgeable and entertaining.
Elizabeth CToronto
Wonderful. Very interactive. Humourous.
Fred HToronto
Mark did a fantastic job. [Private Client] was a unique challenge of a long history with hardened habits, as well as a very peculiar definition of Agile and SCRUM.
Imran APrivate Client
Amazing! Given the time a lot was covered about Scrum.
Hanumanth Reddy POttawa
Mark presented very well. Class well organized. Liked the zoo activity and actually applying the scrum guidleines to a sprint.
Laurel PEdmonton
Very effective and experienced instructor. Well organized.
Sam MOttawa
Great course Mark! I really enjoyed learning more about the framwork and listening to others point of view.
Sarah MToronto
Excellent course. Recommend for people that have done some Scrum and read all the readings. Mark is a great instructor. Among best I've had.
David MEdmonton
Mark is a great teacher. Funny, communicates his ideas well, very knowledgeable, - a great teacher! This was a good course!
Anthony DVirtual
Mark's knowledge and real world examples have cleared up my knowledge of scrum, the roles and responsibilities of the scrum team, and what I need to implement in my organization.
Greg MEdmonton
Mark was great. I appreciated his directness.
James POttawa
Mark is a knowledgeable and fun person. He was able to clearly explain the concepts and facilitiate discussions and progress.
Teodor HPrivate Client
Mark's session was a great combination of theory, practical exercises and real life stories that kept this learner engaged and involved. Time spent was definitely worthwhile. Thanks!
Justin LVirtual
Mark did an excellent job keeping the course dynamic and informative. I would have loved a few more days to really dig into some subjects.
Tim KPrivate Client
Great instructor - very clear and easy to follow. Makes you think.
Linda LOttawa
Mark is one of the most engaging instructors I have had the opportunity to work with and learn from. Thanks again for the start in Scrum!
Matt MKitchener-Waterloo
Awesome. Enlightment for pain points like overtime, too many WIP, motivation, etc.
Susie LVancouver

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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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.

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