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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I like to recommend this course to other team members to help everyone get to the same mindset and understanding. I gained a clearer understanding of what Agile really is and I'd like to see it work in my future projects.
Lynda SEdmonton
Content and pace of course was good. Mark was a great coach and answered questions thoroughly.
Chris RKitchener-Waterloo
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
Really enjoyed Mark's presonal anecdotes and humour. Very clear that Mark is knowledgeable and I look forward to diving into the numerous references for "extra reading".
Naomi MOttawa
Very knowledgeable, informative, flexible in fitting situations into ideas.
Katie MOttawa
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
Interesting and original and knowledgeable.
Liliana MOttawa
I really enjoyed the course. Mark really understands the topic and is willing to go into great depth about items the students wished. Very enjoyable.
Mark MKitchener-Waterloo
I really appreciated the experience as a whole. Great valuable content. Super trainer. Experienced and flexible.
Marie MOttawa
Mark was a great instructor, really made the content easily understandable and great at answering questions.
Melanie MVirtual
Awesome. Enlightment for pain points like overtime, too many WIP, motivation, etc.
Susie LVancouver
I cannot say anything but good things about the course, and have been telling many people in my org about it.
Hatem NVirtual
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
Greatly impressed by the teaching style and format of the course. Much appreciate the sprint style format and the engagment level of the instructor.
Hatem NOttawa
Well presented - effective - open to discussion - provides information that shows us better methods and resources for self learning.
Bedros NMontreal
The content of the course covered most of things I was looking for. Mark is a knowledgeable instructor and was able to answer all of the queries the class had.
Ramandeep MEdmonton
Great background experience, a lot of passion in his speech, was able to answer even challenging questions.
Alex NPrivate Client
After 24+ years of traditional thinking, this was refreshing and new. Can't wait to begin implementing at work. Thanks, Mark!
Kristine NEdmonton
Mark is engaging, very knowledgeable and morphs to the class knowledge. His sense of humor is also appreciated.
Malisha CToronto
Overall very well structured course. It helped me see the benefits of Scrum and learned how to apply it.
Nazir EOttawa
Very good. Great at illustrating his point.
Manny BOttawa
I enjoyed the hands-on nature of the course and Mark's presentation style. My mind was blown several times in the two days which was unexpected and completely awesome.
Heather OEdmonton
It was an excellent seminar. It gave us hands-on exercises. I can see lots of challenges ahead as I try to implement changes to our scrum team. Should be fun and interesting journey!
Ann Margaret GMontreal
Very knowledgeable in what he is teaching. Passion for scrum.
Mandi AEdmonton
Mark was intensely knowledgeable, humorous, and a bit off-beat. Initially I was skeptical of his abilites to engage the totality of the group but as the course progressed he appeared to fully succeed.
David OEdmonton
Mark was excellent - one of the best instructors I have had. Well prepared, knowledgable, and he obviously cares.
David OEdmonton
Whether you have 0 days or 10 years of product owner experience you're guaranted to learn a lot from this course.
Luke NOttawa
Mark is the real s**t. He's lived through the pain points and knows where the bodies are buried.
Christian FMontreal
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
Very knowledgeable, led the session very well.
Bob BPrivate Client
Mark was awesome. Engaging and interactive. Course material is detailed but not overwhelming.
Adam 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
Very knowledgeable and experienced, thanks!
Kendall OVancouver
Intense and totally worth it.
Marinho MEdmonton
Very good instructor. Held my attention throughout, provided very good thinking and provided good insights.
Adrian RPrivate Client
All topics were covered and mastered incredibly well. Could confirm his wide knowledge and experience using and explaining scrum.
Lenin QMontreal
Mark was great !! Very thorough - his passion for what he does came through. I appreciated his organization and engagement with the team. He was awesome.
Rene EVirtual
Amazing! Given the time a lot was covered about Scrum.
Hanumanth Reddy POttawa
I thought the instructor and course was excelelnt and very enlightening.
Aengus MEdmonton
Mark is a great instructor and very knowledgeable in agile and scrum. The course was fun and we had lots of opportunities for learning through practice. I would recommend this course to anyone who is interested in Scrum or has aspirations in being a ScrumMaster.
Jason HVirtual
Much more than expected. Great experience! I appreciate it very much!
Alfredo FOttawa
Course was excellent, wealth of information. Mark is very knowledgable, pace was good, clear and concise, appreciated his sense of humour.
Kevin PEdmonton
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
I like the way the course was taught through examples and games. I found personal anecdotes helpful in understanding concepts.
Randy EOttawa
Mark delivered an excellent course, it was a value-packed 2 days.
Brent COttawa
Mark was excellent and lots of knowledge and passion about Scrum. His anecdotal stories were entertaining and informational.
Kevin MPrivate Client
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
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
Mark is very engaging and keeps things interesting during the course.
Adam MToronto

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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