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 Levison was a great and engaging instructor! His interactive style of presenting helped me stay engaged during the 2 days of the training.
Olivier TVirtual
Very engaging instructor and scenarios.
Christine APrivate Client
You have a deep understanding of the Scrum methodology. You are good listener and you are able to adapt to your audience. I am really satisfied and will recommend you.
Eric LMontreal
The course was awesome with great instructor. It was great to have the groups for exercices and then discuss with trainer.
Françoise DVirtual
Thoroughly knowledgeable about subject.
Enwei CVancouver
Great energy. Interesting course material.
Julie CToronto
I liked the Powerpoint-less approach. It kept me more engaged and was less barrier in learning.
Geoff DKitchener-Waterloo
Another excellent course! Great balance of theory, exercises, and anecdotes.
Adam BOttawa
Very well done course. Very experienced, knowledgeable instructor, well structured course, clear explanation, keeps nice spirit during the course, encourages collaboration.
Dina DMontreal
Very patient. Really liked the group activity where we had to work in Sprints on user stories.
Anita AVirtual
Great instructor, very satisfied, will recomment! I brought my whole team with me, happy I did.
Joshua COttawa
Mark was a great instructor! Very enthusiastic about the course and assisting its participants in becoming successful product owners. Incredibly knowledgeable and entertaining.
Elizabeth CToronto
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
Truly an expert. Knows his stuff.
Denise AOttawa
I appreciate the breadth and comprehensive nature of reference material. I'm excited to read more.
Stephanie AToronto
Excellent presentation. Challenging contributing questions.
Zeki AMontreal
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Mark. I learned a lot and appreciate his teaching style.
Kendall APrivate Client
Great! Humour is a plus too!
Daryl BVancouver
Instructor was engaged, interesting, and fun. He included all members in discussion and Q/A. The course provided me with what I need to start effectively using scrum at work.
Erik CEdmonton
Mark did an excellent job keeping the course dynamic and informative. I would have loved a few more days to really dig into some subjects.
Tim KPrivate Client
Best training I've taken in a long time.
Susan DPrivate Client
Extremely knowledgeable. Engaged the entire team. Clear communication.
Ahalya AToronto
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
Very good introduction to my new role. Mark leads lively and thought-provoking discussions.
Bob COttawa
Course was informative and entertaining. There was good participant involvement and useful examples.
George COttawa
Did a great job getting the information across. Provided real-world examples and concrete solutions that were helpful. Q&A throughout added a lot.
Jacob DPrivate Client
Very Experienced, Shared Experiences, Class Participation was done very well.
Gary FPrivate Client
Mark Levison is an outstanding instructor who knows how to effectively deliver course content tailored to the learning needs of this students. Everyone on the course benefited greatly from his ability to present new information in a clear and easily understood manner. The Agile Foundations course provided an excellent overview of the Agile Methodology and SCRUM.
Michael GVirtual
Very informative and fun learning session.
Kim KPrivate Client
Excellent job of teaching about using scrum. Very good job engaging the class and providing a fun place to learn. Full moneys worth.
Eric CToronto
He is very engaging and clear. It was easy to grasp the concepts and apply it to exercises.
Jamielyn CToronto
Thank you. It has been one of the most interesting courses I have attended.
Hemant KToronto
Great course and material, I loved the theoretical information with was applied on day 2. Mark did a great job of relating everything to real work examples.
Michael FToronto
Good. Has lots of experience.
Jimmy AEdmonton
Mark was very knowledgeable; I really appreciated the examples that he shared with the group. Thank you!
Suzanne AVirtual
This was the first professional class I've taken that gave me a more in depth perspective of the scrum process. Really concise in explanations. Stays on topic as best as possible. Extremely helpful.
Michelle KToronto
Mark was good - foundatian of knowledge and his experiences made for good practical examples.
Mike AMontreal
Mark did a great job of bringing the group into the basic tenets of Agile-Scrum whenever someone brought up a challenge/issue in the participant's particular situation.
Eric AMontreal
Great course material and energetic instructor.
Chris HPrivate Client
Interesting personality and presentation style. Instructor's views align well with my own -> don't continue doing 'insane' things
Brad LEdmonton
10/10 Loved the atmosphere he created, kept us engaged, able to send important messages, did not overwhelm us.
Biljana CPrivate Client
Brilliant! Engaging and enlightening while not promising the world.
Oksana KOttawa
Excellent communicator and interacts well with the class. Great knowledge of course material and a genuine advocate of Scrum.
Tony CToronto
Great course, awesome instructor!
Paul-Andre PPrivate Client
Time master- thank you for pushing us through topics. Honestly - stated that you can provide examples, up to us to decide.
Tracey OToronto
Insanely terrific. I have been bored silly at some Agile training classes. This was 100% interesting… okay, 98%. Very clear, Exceptional memory! I get it now - the value of a *real* pro scrum master.
Simon CVancouver
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 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
Very knowledgeable instructor that kept the course interesting. Course material was awesome! I will recommend to others.
Dave PToronto
Overall very well structured course. It helped me see the benefits of Scrum and learned how to apply it.
Nazir 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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About this course

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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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Your learning doesn’t stop when the workshop ends. You get lifetime access to all course materials, plus a followup email series designed to reinforce your learning objectives and help you apply what you’ve learned on the job.