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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Instructor was very well connected with the teams. Immense knowledge on Agile and Scrum.
Deepa MOttawa
Excellent source of knowledge and provided additional resources. Helped with real examples
Sean OPrivate Client
Covered a little of everything. Was always interesting.
Regis LMontreal
Really dynamic! Use scrum tools to control the flow of the course which is a good example.
Marc LMontreal
Mark is very good. Has a lot of working experiences and real life stories.
Wilson MEdmonton
Lively, hands on, enlightening. Would recommend.
Allen NEdmonton
Great course, a lot of valuable information. Experienced instructor, great ability to adapt to group and real work situtations.
Karen LPrivate Client
The instructor was well-prepared and taught the class really well and engaged the whole class. Kudos.
Anastasios ZToronto
Very nice, friendly and knowledgable. Encouraging of questions and participation. Approachable and making you feel comfortable to get something wrong but grow from it.
Dan SVirtual
Effective, making him do things with powerpoint would be fun to watch.
Gary SEdmonton
He is knowledgeable and patient about the subject.
Nabil SEdmonton
Training style great. Open to discussions and various viewpoints. Helpful. Wants to make sure we all understand. Takes time to discuss further if required. Manages the agenda/time with group consensus/agreement.
Meredith SToronto
I enjoyed Mark's personality and vast knowledge he provided.
Adrian CToronto
I think Mark is extremely flexible and accommodating to the needs of the group. Thank you Mark, your 4 days with us were amazing and helpful.
Andrea KPrivate Client
Great in depth knowledge of subject matter.
Joseph COttawa
As a self-employed business owner with a small team, this course was helpful in understanding how to improve my company's value to clients.
Murtada SEdmonton
Kept audience engaged, and kept course relevant to entire group. Brought Scrum into how the course was taught! (Neat!)
Steve BOttawa
Great course. Lots of fun and learning. Thanks!
Edgar DVancouver
Amazing experience. Mark is a great inspirational mentor. Teaches me how to approach problems and think out of the box.
Ben HKitchener-Waterloo
Very good at keeping interest. Very dynamic, engages easily with students.
Paul PMontreal
Excellent instructor!!! Expert in Agile/Scrum.
Marc BOttawa
Mark has been very important in teaching us the scrummaster role and scrum processes.
Maxime GMontreal
These days passed quickly, the instructor is very friendly and relaxed. Thanks again to Mark for his support!
Vlad AVirtual
Mark was exceptional in introducing us to the Scrum world. Contents in the Mural was well formulated, informative and crisp. Mark was open to discussion and provided alternative options for real time issues faced by participant. He was able to create traps so that we can get the real insight of scrum's events. Overall, I am amazed the way Mark covered the whole session. I am looking forward to go through his new upcoming book.
Birendra KVirtual
Well done, Mark. We laughed a lot and you made this real for us.
Joshua SKitchener-Waterloo
Course material provided was excellent for references and follow up. Instructor was energetic, dynamic, and full engaging.
Dinah MPrivate Client
Great! Very enthuiastic instructor and made learning a breeze.
Dalbir SKitchener-Waterloo
Very well put together and organized. Great teacher who uses lots of examples.
Kunal SToronto
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
Mark delivered an excellent course, it was a value-packed 2 days.
Brent COttawa
Very good introduction to my new role. Mark leads lively and thought-provoking discussions.
Bob COttawa
Mark is a wealth of knowledge and makes agile super easy! The course is interesting, interactive, and extremely informative. I got a lot of takeaways from the course and excited to take this back to my team. I'm looking forward to taking the Advance Scrum and Advanced PO courses next Fall.
Jenny CVirtual
Instructor was informative and handled the challenges he faced well.
Ruth JPrivate Client
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
A excellent and well-delivered course. Very informative!
Warren ROttawa
Mark is very good in delivering the Scrum Training. Thank you for not repeating the mechanics!! Thanks for assidting with the dimensions around [Private Client] environment
Jack SPrivate Client
Mark has extensive experience on which he can call on to illustrate the reason for what works and what does not.
Mark CPrivate Client
Excellent. Learn a lot about Scrum. Very knowledgeable and experienced in the area. Able to relate different examples on questions asked during class.
Robert CToronto
Well versed in knowledge and provided great "philosophical" thinking towards solutions to problems at work. Fun and approachable. Encourages solution formulation yourself.
Kang CKitchener-Waterloo
Mark is super knowledgable on the topic and presents it in a fun and educational atmosphere. Really enjoyed the team work and Mark's perspective on a lot of the information.
Shelly MToronto
Instructor was extremely well prepared, know the material inside and out. Always had a good response for every question. And had a great sense of humor
Christian BPrivate Client
Mark is an engaging instructor using conversation and interaction as the engagement catalyst!
Shawn RToronto
Great Choose-Your-Own-Adventure!
Mike SOttawa
The course was really interactive, Mark did a great job at running the course online during the pandemic. He was always willing to answer questions and provide relevant resources. I like that the focus during class-time was more on effective implementation in the real world rather than learning text-book material.
Agata BVirtual
Great energy. Interesting course material.
Julie CToronto
The combination of hands-on practice and excellent facilitation style made this course enjoyable, useful and very applicable to my day to day life as a Project Manager. The content was carefully curated and meaningful discussions were had during the session. It was engaging, interactive and insightful! I would highly recommend Mark and the Agile Pain Relief company for anyone looking to do their CSM training and pass the exam!
Valerie GVirtual
Very knowledgeable instructor about scrum and software development in general.
Elizabeth GOttawa
Mark was a great facilitator. No changes suggested! Helpful, honest, experienced, engaging.
Candice SEdmonton
It was a very helpful course and it met my expectations.
Vinicious GVancouver
Brilliant instructor for a heavy and varied course. Answers questions almost flawlessly and really understands what people need in order to learn effectively.
Analee CPrivate 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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