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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Love the course and the personality and knowledge you bring!
Steve POttawa
Very good experience, learned a lot, will be able to apply what I have learned, good job.
David KEdmonton
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
Mark was great! Although the online learning environment can be tricky, I found Mark has the ability to keep a class engaged. Whether you're introverted or extroverted, this course is for you.
Curtis HVirtual
I had the best two days of practical training on Agile. Instructor has logical answers to my questions.
Angie EEdmonton
Mark did a great job and was impressed how well it worked virtually and not in person!
Jennifer PVirtual
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
Excellent course and instructor.
Joanna PEdmonton
Mark is a very engaging instructor.
Chris PEdmonton
I enjoyed Mark's personality and vast knowledge he provided.
Adrian CToronto
Mark clearly presents the scrum process and principles. He provides background information and stories to reinforce these techniques.
Richard COttawa
Very good instructor. Held my attention throughout, provided very good thinking and provided good insights.
Adrian RPrivate Client
Great facilitation techniques often used as a regular classroom teacher (i.e. rephrasing, simplificaion, observing, hinting, investigative learning).
Mike PMontreal
Mark was great. I appreciated his directness.
James POttawa
Long days but really challenged me to rethink how I can enhance my BA skills and how to contribute in different ways to my team.
Pearline EVancouver
I like the way the course was taught through examples and games. I found personal anecdotes helpful in understanding concepts.
Randy EOttawa
Mark is a great instructor, very educated and helpful about Scrum and Agile. The course is very thorough and way better than typical Scrum training I have attended in the past.
Rishi PToronto
Overall very well structured course. It helped me see the benefits of Scrum and learned how to apply it.
Nazir EOttawa
The course and exercise were well designed to add value compared to reading about Scrum. Mark is an effective presenter, keeping things interesting and (often) entertaining.
Gordon EPrivate 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
Content and pace of course was good. Mark was a great coach and answered questions thoroughly.
Chris RKitchener-Waterloo
The ScrumMaster training as facilitated by Mark Levison was an invaluable experience in my both by personal and professional growth. Mark's instruction kept me engaged and entertained with materials for the duration of the 2 day seminar. I will highly recommend this course to anyone interested in exploring Agile within their places of work.
Mike EVirtual
Mark is a great instructor, very clear and informative. Great course. High recommendable.
Simon BVancouver
Mark was very personable, easy going and knows what he was teaching. This makes the class environment more interactive and fun
Dan DVirtual
I wanted to take the time to leave this review after seeing how my new Scrum knowledge has impacted my work. Now, I can confidently say that the training not only gave me a deeper understanding of Agile and Scrum but also boosted my confidence, motivation, and drive. I apply my new skills every single day, and they have made a significant difference in how I support my teams. Mark, thank you for contributing to my growth—I’m so glad I took this step. Your training was engaging, insightful, and truly life-changing for anyone passionate about Scrum and Agile. I highly recommend this certification to anyone looking to elevate their skills and make a real impact in their teams!
Anastasia FVirtual
(Instructor was) very pragmatic and opened your mind and steer conversation, so you can figure it out, instead of reading through material.
Priya PPrivate Client
Elegant and quirky faciliation makes for enjoyable and engaging learning.
Donald PToronto
Great course! My future teams will be thankful to be a high performance team.
Filipe PVancouver
Great course Mark! I really enjoyed learning more about the framwork and listening to others point of view.
Sarah MToronto
Mark did a great job of purposefully making us all feel included and engaged with his class. He added great clarity to the budding scrum process that has taken over in my workplace. I have seen many versions and perspectives on scrum values that deviate and distort how scrum would work, but I am now confident I can facilitate with my projects and team, using a much clearer scrum.
Charlene FVirtual
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
Mark did an awesome job. He is very knowledgable, helpful, and patient. I will recommend this course for sure.
Jamal EToronto
Very good and useful information. I like the format (no boring Powerpoint) and doing the meeting as a sprint was great.
Fred BPrivate Client
Great instructor, very satisfied, will recomment! I brought my whole team with me, happy I did.
Joshua COttawa
Mark has helped me learn Agile in a fun way. The hands on experience have added value for a non-agile user like me.
Keerthiga NEdmonton
True value demonstrated outside of the software development world.
Theresa BToronto
Mark was an extremely engaging and informative instructor. I enjoyed all of the aspects of the course/topics covered. I look forward to continuing my Agile education because of this course.
Cailey RToronto
Mark's teaching methods make the course fly and help the information stick. He gives a clear understanding of the theory of agile/scrum and real world application tips so students can apply scrum immediately and successfully.
Anne MOttawa
Mark is the real s**t. He's lived through the pain points and knows where the bodies are buried.
Christian FMontreal
Really helpful and inspiring!
Thomas (Tan) PToronto
This instructor was absolutely brilliant. He was very clear and knowlegable in all the areas. He was also very honest in his opinions.
Jonathan EOttawa
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 teacher and is very good at engaging people. Really gets the spark going!
Julien LMontreal
The course was well led, I found it very useful. Allowing the conversations to go on was nice as a lot of the issues were issues I was experiencing as well. I found Mark to be pleasant and extremely knowledgeable.
Jeff FVirtual
Very enthusiastic and diplomatic. Very knowledgeable. Course was enjoyable.
Chris MKitchener-Waterloo
Very easy to get along with and makes points very clearly.
Jason PToronto
Mark is great and the course is very valuable. I really appricate your time and patience. We covered a lot of mtaterial which is great.
William DOttawa
The course was well laid out, a good mix of discussions, examples, and practice.
Chris FToronto
I participated in the Certified Scrum Master course instructed by Mark Levison. Mark is a very well educated in the Agile Scrum methodology and presented the course material in a very entertaining way during the 2-day course. I learned a lot of things I had not previously known even though I had been practicing scrum for the past 5 years. I would highly recommend that every organization send their scrum focal’s to this training – it will help them advance their organization in implementing, and delivering scrum based projects, thus help their business be more successful.
Graham FVirtual
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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