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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Very engaging instructor and scenarios.
Christine APrivate Client
One of the best training classes I've had.
Keith WPrivate Client
Mark is excellent. He uses examples that are very clear to everyone. He is patient and ensures everyone understands the material.
Emmanuel BMontreal
Really liked the approach by Mark to apply Scrum methodology to this training. Also Mark was available to answer questions and patient.
Damien JOttawa
Very informative and fun learning session.
Kim KPrivate Client
Mark was an awesome instructor, engaging, and very informative and knowledgable.
Tanya BToronto
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
The course was awesome with great instructor. It was great to have the groups for exercices and then discuss with trainer.
Françoise DVirtual
Time master- thank you for pushing us through topics. Honestly - stated that you can provide examples, up to us to decide.
Tracey OToronto
Mark did a great job. I appreciated that a) he was coming from a strong development background and b) had an obvious passion about Scrum and the benefits it could bring to development.
Adam MVirtual
Enjoyed and learned much more than expected out of a two day course.
Ian MOttawa
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
Mark is knowledgable and engaging. What I liked the most was that he stood his ground if anyone challenged what he taught (respectfully) and offered an explanation why.
Andrea MOttawa
Instructor was very well connected with the teams. Immense knowledge on Agile and Scrum.
Deepa MOttawa
I found Mark very engaging and thought he helped make the material very interesting.
Jason DToronto
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
This course is valuable to anyone who would like to be introduced to Scrum. It was a well spended 2 day course and was very helpful. Mark is very knowledgeable and a very good coach.
Ronald HOttawa
Mark was great and full of recommendations. He was also very knowledgeable and able to answer all our questions.
Chris MPrivate Client
Great training. Good energy throughout the workshop. Well facilitated. I liked the regular breaks. Good combination of both breakout room exercises and whole group learnings. Good use of technology for a virtual workshop.
Carole GVirtual
Mark was an excellent instructor and facilitator for the certified product owner course. The content was engaging, not just a typical PowerPoint presentation. Active learning was encouraged through the use of breakout sessions where the course material was practiced; this allowed for better understanding and encouraged practical questions. I would recommend the course to anybody that wants to improve their product ownership skills and has the means to attend.
Mark FVirtual
Mark was a great commincator of the concepts. He practiced what he preached by using SCRUM to team.
Darren MMontreal
Excellent. Loved the real world experience brought to the course.
Jason MOttawa
To the point and with passion!
Colin MToronto
Mark was very approachable, friendly, and knowledgable. He has done a great job in helping someone like me who doesn't belong to a corporate world learn so much about scrum in 2 days!
Mashiat FToronto
Excellent course! Not a wasted minute!
John MOttawa
Mark is very patient and gives very good explanations. Setup the environment to be very friendly.
Zac LVirtual
Awsome course, Learned an amazing amout. Mark is fun and an interesting man. He made learning fun.
Donna REdmonton
Excellent instructor provided engaging activites to help roleplay learning and provoke meaningful discussions.
Alice PEdmonton
Mark was fantastic and the course was a great!
Henry MVirtual
Honestly, the course was way better than expected and worked virtually. I was really nervous about how this would work. Enjoyed the course. It could almost be another 1/2 day in length. The instructor is very knowledgeable. I was a bit worried about the 'virtual' format, but it was so well designed that it worked so well. Kudos! The prep work is important to do - glad it's a requirement.
Dwight MVirtual
As a test manager I was looking for a bridge between my Scrum learning and current skills, and becoming confident that I could act as a scrum master. This course provided it.
Rachel JToronto
Mark did an excellent job of teaching the material and went beyond just presenting it.
Noah AEdmonton
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 is a great presenter. I appreciate that he is to the point and succinct in his points, but can expand when prompted. I appreciate that there was room for "derailment" and that the training was made more custom tailored to the individual experiences of the scrum masters at our org. The subject matter was good. I think it contained a lot of the info that new scrum masters don't think about, and covered a lot of traps that they fall into.
Adel AVirtual
Insightful material, engaging classroom practice.
Eliza BVirtual
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
Clear and open to questions, provides good examples that help illustrate the process.
Radu SPrivate Client
Course was very informative. You spoke to the entire group on a level everyone can understand.
Monica HPrivate Client
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
Mark is a very entertaining instructor. I feel I learned a great deal more than I could through reading/self study.
Michael HToronto
Instructor was very knowledgable! Incredible library in his head.
Kafia BOttawa
Very good course, well balanced and very interactive.
Alexandre GMontreal
Great instructor, very satisfied, will recomment! I brought my whole team with me, happy I did.
Joshua COttawa
Instructor was very knowledgeable and expressed his thoughts honestly and concisely. Course was very informative.
Lorne APrivate Client
Great in depth knowledge of subject matter.
Joseph COttawa
Mark did a fantastic job of concisely and thoroughly describing the POs.
Dean GToronto
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
Mark did a great job. I learned way more than I thought. Scrum is way more than sprints and stand ups. It's a system for effective teams.
Joshua BVirtual
Honest and open, encouraged us to think on our own. Really highlighted this is not a defined process, we need to figure out what works best for our teams,
Alana GPrivate Client
I like the way the course was taught through examples and games. I found personal anecdotes helpful in understanding concepts.
Randy EOttawa

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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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.

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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.

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Use Scrum knowledge to standout at work, get paid more, and impress your customer, all without burning out.

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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.

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