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 was a great instructor with real-world knowledge and experience. He made the course fun and interesting. He was very patient and answered all questions; offered follow up reading material and books.
Tania DVirtual
Great energy. Made the day pass with a mix of humour and data.
Matthew COttawa
Second course with Mark went great. I have to figure out how to afford more?
David HMontreal
Great instructor, very satisfied, will recomment! I brought my whole team with me, happy I did.
Joshua COttawa
Love the course and the personality and knowledge you bring!
Steve POttawa
Great job! You did a great job or engaging us and encouraging participation. I feel inspired to better my team and organization using the knowledge I gained.
Michael DToronto
Mark leads the class on an explanation of the topics and provides traps to ensure students can learn from practice.
Peter CPrivate Client
Disciplined, focused, knowledgeable.
James CKitchener-Waterloo
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
Mark is a lively and engaging instructor. Information was presented effectively and at a reasonable pace.
Joel DOttawa
Very much appreciated the training material as it has direct implication in our project methodologies.
Mizan CMontreal
Mark has figured out how to take a complex and vast subject and make it engaging via Zoom. That's amazing.
Natasha DVirtual
Using Scrum to teach Scrum. Perfect.
Andrew COttawa
Mark is a wonderful, energetic instructer who helps you to evaluate how you are working in your own environment. Then he helps you to figure out how to improve it.
Shelley 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
Mark is very knowledgeable on the subject and always had good arguments to overcome the "we couldn't do this in our organization".
Sebastien DPrivate Client
Overall, this was a well curated and delivered course. The instructor is SME on the subject of Scrum with lots of hands-on experiences. This helps to drive the points home to the trainees. Bravo Mark for the excellent job done.
Adefemi DVirtual
Excellent! Engaged all of the time. My head is exploding with new knowledge.
Harlie DMontreal
Mark was good - foundatian of knowledge and his experiences made for good practical examples.
Mike AMontreal
Great job, easy to understand and fun.
Matt CKitchener-Waterloo
Masters the subject more than anyone else I've met.
Carlo DMontreal
Fantastic instructor. Great real story examples.
Allan CEdmonton
Excellent overview of Scrum/Kanban/Agile. The technical material/theoretical material was well balanced/augments with the personal expeirences of the instructor. Highly recommend.
Dino CPrivate Client
I really enjoyed the workshop and I think the examples were really helpful in understanding the basics of scrum.
Louis-Pierre DMontreal
Mark was engaging and patient. He got everyone involved and kept spirits and energy levels high.
David BPrivate Client
Mark is excellent. He uses examples that are very clear to everyone. He is patient and ensures everyone understands the material.
Emmanuel BMontreal
Mark was an excellent teacher; explained all concepts very well.
Jackie COttawa
The instructor Mark was very knowledgeable and provided lots of knowledge and examples. I learned a lot but did not realize what a huge topic this is.
Andrei DToronto
Thanks for being so responsive and Agile in your approach to leading the class.
Deb BKitchener-Waterloo
Interesting approach to session - dialogue with class versus speaking to slides.
Michelina DToronto
Good energy. Good examples. Kept the class on track.
Wilson CEdmonton
Mark was fantastic. He really knows how to keep everyone engaged and I found the course really fun. Still subscribe to the belief that learning is done best when you're having fun so thank you :)
Sabrina AVirtual
Classes with Mark was so worthwhile! Mark has an amazing way of breaking things down so that they are understandable, and always keeping it light and fun. Overall, the course is well designed, and the topics were engaging and useful.
Mohamad AVirtual
Refreshing, enlightening, funny, engaging, instructive.
Richard DPrivate Client
Thoroughly knowledgeable about subject.
Enwei CVancouver
Mark did a fantastic job incorporating SCRUM through the training while not giving answers, but forcing us to think on our own.
Kellen BKitchener-Waterloo
This was a great course that I will recomment to others! A lot to cover in a short period of time, and I managed to understand most if not all material. I'm excited to take my learnings with me and apply to my role at my company!
Lesleanne BToronto
I applaud Mark's view on working in agile. I was able to clearly understand the fundamental core and roles of agile.
Adil SOttawa
Amazing course! Love every second of it. Mark kept us all engaged. I knew nothing about agile/scrum and now feel well equipped to make changes at work. I'd love for the rest of my team to attend.
Shravan COttawa
I liked the structure of the course, presented in an agile manner to simulate real team dynamics. Enjoyed it a lot!
Michelle MMontreal
Well organized, skillfully motivates the team and demonstrates excellent practical examples
Hanna MVirtual
Instructor was very well connected with the teams. Immense knowledge on Agile and Scrum.
Deepa MOttawa
I thought the material and instructor was excellent. It was a full two days!
Shawn DEdmonton
Instructor was very knowledgable! Incredible library in his head.
Kafia BOttawa
Mark harnessed the power of our diverse perspectives/skills/experience to create agile team enacting scrum as we applied our learning. This applied learning led us to knowledge sharing, trust, and mastery.
Danica MOttawa
I appreciate the breadth and comprehensive nature of reference material. I'm excited to read more.
Stephanie AToronto
Excellent, material and discussion was perfect.
Jacques CVirtual
Was an extremely focused and well organized two days, I have taken other courses in similar timelines but found this significantly easier to consume and digest the information. Mark was funny, and left me with an impression of “this guy is legit, and extremely intelligent, I need to soak up his knowledge”.
Jack BVirtual
Very knowledgeable in what he is teaching. Passion for scrum.
Mandi AEdmonton
Very engaging instructor and scenarios.
Christine APrivate 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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