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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Great! Mark is a wonderful instructor and was able to apply agile principles to life outside software development.
Leanne HKitchener-Waterloo
The CSM course rocks! If you want to immediately jump into the action and improve as you go, this is it. You'll start off as a group of strangers, and find out how quickly you can build a high-performance team. And, if you separately want to read every comprehensive detail there is to know about scrum, Mark will share that with you too.
Nicole BVirtual
Awesome material delivery.
Geetha KToronto
Mark has been very important in teaching us the scrummaster role and scrum processes.
Maxime GMontreal
Good course and instructor was great. I didn't fall asleep once.
Samsong CEdmonton
Great course. Information overload but not in a bad way. I liked that we discussed specific corporate problems people were having. Helped build context in how others are using Agile/Scrum. Maybe misusing, too.
Tyler BVancouver
Mark was a great instructor. His quirky ways and sense of humour make for a great course. I was entertained and interested each step of the way.
Philippe BPrivate Client
Awesome. Enlightment for pain points like overtime, too many WIP, motivation, etc.
Susie LVancouver
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
Loved this course! Mark is very thorough and attentive as a teacher. He leveraged Mural in such interactive ways, which allowed him to understand the students well and shape the class accordingly. He is like the Jedi master of scrum and insanely advanced methods of leaderless collaboration and accomplishment. He's also the king of super nerdy jokes, which made the class fun and brought out the super nerd in everyone.
Lia GVirtual
It was a very helpful course and it met my expectations.
Vinicious GVancouver
Much more than expected. Great experience! I appreciate it very much!
Alfredo FOttawa
Overall excellent instruction to Agile, practical exercises worked well, foundation to applications of principles and desire to learn more established.
Stuart BVancouver
Very instructive course and thought provoking. I will use it in a unique way and it gave me approach that will allow it to work for me.
Mike GVancouver
Mark made the class enjoyable. I was initially dreading a 3 day course. After the first day I knew that I could live through the course.
Dickie BPrivate Client
I appreciate the breadth and comprehensive nature of reference material. I'm excited to read more.
Stephanie AToronto
Mark was very knowledgeable; I really appreciated the examples that he shared with the group. Thank you!
Suzanne AVirtual
Excellent presentation. Challenging contributing questions.
Zeki AMontreal
Mark was really engaging and very knowledgeable.
Samantha BPrivate Client
Amazing instructor, very clear and breaks our pre-conceived understandings.
Jean-Francois BMontreal
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
Mark was very personable, easy going an know what he was teaching. This makes the class environment more interactive and fun.
Asif BVirtual
Thanks for being so responsive and Agile in your approach to leading the class.
Deb BKitchener-Waterloo
As a junior developer you helped me learn more about software development and the right way to do things.
Joe HPrivate Client
I truly enjoyed the Scrum Master course. Mark shares industry knowledge so it is not just theory. The material/boards were easy to understand.
Yuri AVirtual
Very Experienced, Shared Experiences, Class Participation was done very well.
Gary FPrivate Client
Excellent communicator, good at focusing on the important topics.
Mick BPrivate Client
Mark was very personable and knowledgeable about the subject. Nothing threw him.
Sharon GPrivate Client
Great Class! Learning in a dynamic and fun way with interesting and useful context and examples.
Suzelle FMontreal
The course was well organizated and presented but the real value comes in the form of the facilitator Mark. His knowledge, enthusiasm and ability to help you find our own answers was refreshing, Thank you Mark!
James BOttawa
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
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
Very well done. Good introduction of the concepts, good use of technology, good practical incorporation of the methods being taught into the course itself, 10/10
Adam GVirtual
Kept audience engaged, and kept course relevant to entire group. Brought Scrum into how the course was taught! (Neat!)
Steve BOttawa
Excellent course, excellent communication. Loved the fact that the instructon was showing us how SCRUM should respond to different situtions.
Pascal GPrivate Client
Extremely knowledgeable. Engaged the entire team. Clear communication.
Ahalya AToronto
A great course for those who wish to change their conventional PM perspective to a more open and agile one.
Catherine HMontreal
Mark is very knowledgeable and really challenges the class to engage, speak, think about the core concepts, even when it’s messy/unclear in “real world” situations. I talked to a couple of my colleagues afterward and even the ones who were having difficulty with the usefulness of Scrum in their professional lives really enjoyed the course and the instructor, myself included.
Louis BVirtual
Instructor is very knowledgeable and delivers the course extremely well. Makes it interesting!
Brian APrivate Client
Mark delivered the course exceptionally well.
Amjad GEdmonton
Course: great content! Instructor: excellent and very knowledgeable on the subject.
Nadeem FEdmonton
Mark, you are awesome! I enjoyed your style of teaching/coaching. You focused on our needs and priorities ensuring a "happy customer." You are also respectful towards everyone's opinion which makes it engaging conversation.
Zeeshan BOttawa
Instructor very knowledgeable, supportive, and a great coach.
Jay BVancouver
The CSM course was extremely valuable in understanding the theorotical and practical concepts and techniques necessary to start my journey as Scrum Master. Mark was a knowledgeable and flexible facilitor.
Erik GToronto
Instructor was very knowledgeable and expressed his thoughts honestly and concisely. Course was very informative.
Lorne APrivate Client
Mark is super knowledgeable and engaging. 10/10. Would recommend.
Steve BPrivate Client
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
Overall very well structured course. It helped me see the benefits of Scrum and learned how to apply it.
Nazir EOttawa
Brilliant! Truly enjoyed the information and material. Instructor related well to class and provided for fantastic environment for learning. Would recommend this course and facilitator in a heart beat.
Raquel BPrivate Client
Mark is very knowledgable. I really enjoy his style of teaching. Very good course.
Lionel GPrivate 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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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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