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 been very important in teaching us the scrummaster role and scrum processes.
Maxime GMontreal
Mark maintained an ongoing environment of engagement. One of the best classroom based courses I have participated in.
Grant BPrivate Client
Solid course, instructor was knowledgeable and friendly. I liked how it felt like a conversation and not a presentation, so I had pretty high engagement.This subject feels like an applied art, not a list of facts for memorization.
Michael RVirtual
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
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 was great at reorganizing our organizational challenges. He was dynamic and kept me interested the entire time.
Jessica PPrivate Client
Objective when needed and directs us to the conclusions. Interesting course.
Andre MMontreal
Mark has a great style of delivery even over zoom. He kept my attention and that of the class by using humor and explaining things very matter of factly. Therefore no confusion and the information actually stuck. He understands what it takes to deliver an engaging session by having a number of break out activities that were fun and comfortable. Thank you Mark!
Deborah RVirtual
Covered a little of everything. Was always interesting.
Regis LMontreal
Excellent instructor. Left lots of room for us to think by ourselves. Great!
Kathleen LVancouver
Course gave me clarity on the basic principles of Scrum. Drove home the power of 'team'.
Lia PToronto
Course was excellent, wealth of information. Mark is very knowledgable, pace was good, clear and concise, appreciated his sense of humour.
Kevin PEdmonton
Very concise, clear material. Lots of experience went into the material and live explanation.
Justin LKitchener-Waterloo
Instructor is very knowledgeable, approachable and fun which aids learning.
Kevin MOttawa
Good course and Mark is an awesome facilitator. Loved the way Mark conducted the training.
Gajan PKitchener-Waterloo
Great course - certainly lived up to its reputation.
Ryann MKitchener-Waterloo
I cannot say anything but good things about the course, and have been telling many people in my org about it.
Hatem NVirtual
Nothing but positive things to say. Mark was very clear in the material he presented and was able to easily pivot to a new topic or give additional context as required. I enjoyed the exercises and open discussions.
Angela MOttawa
Whether you have 0 days or 10 years of product owner experience you're guaranted to learn a lot from this course.
Luke NOttawa
Very informative. Well presented. Good tempo.
Robert MOttawa
The course material is great and the way Mark presents it is very clear. Mark augments the material with real-world scrum experience across many components/orgs.
Scott NOttawa
Created an atomosphere that encouraged participation and active learning in a variety of ways that were effective, comfortable, and fun.
Stuart SOttawa
Extremely enlightening. Put a lot of elements into proper context. Great foundation.
Yvan NMontreal
Mark is very knowledgeable and did a great job. I like the frequency of the breaks. With the frequency of breakout rooms, jumping around documents, it was clear he was prepared.
Matthew RVirtual
Mark was full of energy. There was never a moment where what we were discussing wasn't interesting.
Swetha RKitchener-Waterloo
Mark is quite knowledgable about the subject. A good collaborative style was used so I can learn everyone's views and share what I could gather.
Sriprasadh ROttawa
Excellent, great management of large group, Excellent information
Susan LPrivate Client
Really liked it, will recommend to others.
Alexey SToronto
Well prepared. Knowledgeable on and passionate about the subject matter. The virtual course functioned equally well as the in-class course.
Lin-Mari LVirtual
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
The course was informative and engaging. It was delivered in a way that help me achieve better understanding of the material, Mark rocks!!
Akhmad SPrivate Client
Mark is great trainer, and explained all the terms in a way for us to easy understand.
Cynthia SVirtual
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 very knowledgeable. He is a great instructor.
Nitin PToronto
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
Mark was very engaging, and his training session helped to increase my knowledge of Agile and Scrum.
Tiffany MToronto
Mark was an excellent instructor, with a sense of humour that helped keep my focus (which is particularly challenging with the course being online over 3 days). Being able to run through simulated sprints to help reinforce the material was very helpful.
Micheal CVirtual
Great in depth knowledge of subject matter.
Joseph COttawa
Mark is extremely well informed on the subject matter and made it extremely easy to comprehend. I find his ability to articulate his thoughts and teachings very impressive, and it's easy to see how intelligent he is.
Alexandria SOttawa
Awesome instructor with a sense of humor. Well read and fun!
Wendy AVancouver
Mark delivered an excellent course, it was a value-packed 2 days.
Brent COttawa
Very knowledgeable instructor. His experience is obvious.
Mark LMontreal
The course included everything I hoped to cover and Mark very well demonstrated its content.
Jerome CToronto
The instructor and the course both were awesome.
Rajeev RToronto
Very engaging instructor. Used many real-life examples.
Laura OPrivate Client
Passionate and enthusiastic instructor, excellent course and materials.
Don CVancouver
Solid grounding in Scrum and examples to apply it at work.
John CVancouver
Using Scrum to teach Scrum. Perfect.
Andrew COttawa
Course was informative and entertaining. There was good participant involvement and useful examples.
George COttawa
He explained extremely well and gave great concrete examples. Helped to see how to apply to work place.
Genevieve CMontreal

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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