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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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
Instructor was amazing, easy to listen to and follow. Did not read from book and provided concrete examples.
Tricia AOttawa
Mark is an articulate speaker that is easy to listen to and he brings real-life situations to the course which makes it interesting. Answers questions well and takes the time to make sure he gets his point across.
Wayne BVirtual
Instructor was very knowledgeable. Situations we brought forward he was able to help us detemine the source of the issue without telling us. Great coach!
Elsie SEdmonton
Mark is an excellent trainer with examples and practices. Very organized and the best thing is his response to our questions with example, in addition, the amount of references that might help up improve as a scrum master.
Dona AMontreal
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
Instructor is very knowledgeable and delivers the course extremely well. Makes it interesting!
Brian APrivate Client
Instructor kept the course interested, kept us engaged through fun exercises. I love the course content, the book. Well prepared reference.
Hulya AOttawa
Mark was extremely knowledgeable, effective teacher, responded well to students and has an excellent sense of humour.
Kely BVancouver
The instructor is clearly knowledgeable about scrum and other approaches. The course demonstrates the basics of scrum very well.
Matthew BToronto
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
Amazing instructor, very clear and breaks our pre-conceived understandings.
Jean-Francois BMontreal
Great instructor, very satisfied, will recomment! I brought my whole team with me, happy I did.
Joshua COttawa
Mark was an excellent instructor, with a sense of humour that helped keep my focus (which is particularly challenging with the course being online over 3 days). Being able to run through simulated sprints to help reinforce the material was very helpful.
Micheal CVirtual
Mark was very knowledgeable and walked us through Scrum using the actual technique. Very good technique.
Kevin COttawa
Mark was an excellent teacher; explained all concepts very well.
Jackie COttawa
A very rewarding learning experience. Timeboxed for two days, that really provides business value for future scrum masters /Agile practioners.
Delia DMontreal
Thank you Mark, I have lots of ideas to bring back to the team. I appreciated your energy and sense of humor.
David 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
I liked the Powerpoint-less approach. It kept me more engaged and was less barrier in learning.
Geoff DKitchener-Waterloo
Mark had a way of getting info across in both fun yet informative ways. He loves to challenge and be challenged which made it a pleasure.
Ross CPrivate Client
Mark is incredibly well prepared and professional. Best instructor I've ever had, period.
Kevin DKitchener-Waterloo
The course included everything I hoped to cover and Mark very well demonstrated its content.
Jerome CToronto
The course and instructor was excellent. The concepts were clearly communicated.
Edmund CEdmonton
I liked him. I did Scrum Master certification with him a long time ago and, when my colleague and I thought about doing PO training, I suggested we searched to see if he was still active. We feel his experience when he talks.
Christian DVirtual
Mark Levison is a good coach, very knowledgeable and not boring.
Pradeep CPrivate Client
Interesting approach to session - dialogue with class versus speaking to slides.
Michelina DToronto
Mark leads the class on an explanation of the topics and provides traps to ensure students can learn from practice.
Peter CPrivate Client
It was a really good way to understand the concepts of the Scrum Agile practice making us exercise and see how a real Agile org works.
Newton DMontreal
Mark is a very knowledgeable and respectful instructor. He kept the information interesting and engaging, and was great at adapting the focus of the content to align with the needs of the participants. The course overall accomplished its goal of providing me with a good feel for the role of a Scrum Master.
Lisa CVirtual
Mark was great! He was honest and open at points during the training - always resetting the expectations of Scrum, driving home the framework, what it will do and will not do. He is helpful and willing to answer questions.
Dawn DKitchener-Waterloo
Thank you Mark for the amazing training and for the useful tips you shared!
Manal DVirtual
Provided excellent understanding of scrum, more difficult concepts with a very hands on approach.
Carmen CToronto
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 thought Mark did a great job. Never missed a beat and gave us a great experience
Sahan DOttawa
Running the course as a Scrum project and including a real Scrum exchange really reinforced the material.
David COttawa
I thought the overall course material was excellent and was well present by a very dynamic and thoughful instructor.
Austin DOttawa
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
Very good presentation skills. Excellent materials for study (in class and via email). Good tips and pragmatic approach. Good experience and info from the trenches.
Luiza DToronto
Best training I've taken in a long time.
Susan DPrivate Client
Mark is an awesome instructor and he is very knowledgeable.
Samina CVirtual
Very well done course. Very experienced, knowledgeable instructor, well structured course, clear explanation, keeps nice spirit during the course, encourages collaboration.
Dina DMontreal
Mark is very knowledgeable and his experience with Agile and Scrum was awesome as he was able to provide lots of tips and examples.
Sophie CVirtual
Great course. Lots of fun and learning. Thanks!
Edgar DVancouver
Masters the subject more than anyone else I've met.
Carlo DMontreal
Solid grounding in Scrum and examples to apply it at work.
John CVancouver
Very patient. Really liked the group activity where we had to work in Sprints on user stories.
Anita AVirtual
Mark is a very smart, passionate, knowledgable trainer, with a charismatic personality and great pedagogical skills. I see his potential to change companies culture. The course really taught me many things and made me want to read and know more!
Iulia AToronto
Knowledgable and engaged the trainees to think and share their ideas.
Carol BPrivate Client
Mark was very engaging and provides an excellent overview of the Scrum methodology.
Stephane LEdmonton

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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