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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Very knowledgeable in the topic, and always open for healthy discussion and willing to clarify our questions.
Higo MVancouver
Mark is an awesome instructor and he is very knowledgeable.
Samina CVirtual
Mark was great. Excellent sense of humor, great ability to adapt, wealth of business and sugject matter knowledge.
Jesse BPrivate Client
Awesome instructor and course! Will recommend!
Mikael GOttawa
Mark was great! I found this style easy to follow and I feel prepared.
Melanie KToronto
Very knowledgeable and pleasant to work with.
Kristian BEdmonton
Mark did an excellent job running the course. Explanations were clear and he was open to all questions.
Michael DToronto
The positive focus on people and the team was excellent. Incorporating the scrum process in the actual training session is brilliant.
Michael JMontreal
Mark was an excellent instructor and facilitator for the certified product owner course. The content was engaging, not just a typical PowerPoint presentation. Active learning was encouraged through the use of breakout sessions where the course material was practiced; this allowed for better understanding and encouraged practical questions. I would recommend the course to anybody that wants to improve their product ownership skills and has the means to attend.
Mark FVirtual
Nothing but positive things to say. Mark was very clear in the material he presented and was able to easily pivot to a new topic or give additional context as required. I enjoyed the exercises and open discussions.
Angela MOttawa
Very passionate and organized, kept material interesting.
Sjoerd FEdmonton
Made me THINK!!! Provided Framework
Mike CPrivate Client
Mark was an excllent instructor, was able to give clear examples to explain theory.
Samanthi SOttawa
Enjoyed the course. (Mark) made it interesting/fun. Content presented in digestible format.
Brett MPrivate Client
Very concise, clear material. Lots of experience went into the material and live explanation.
Justin LKitchener-Waterloo
It has been a long time where 5 days of work didn't feel like 5 days. The course was so fun, I really enjoyed coming into work.
Cong LVancouver
Good course, lots of excellent content, examples and materials. Would recommend. Mark is a good facilitator who is honest and understanding about the technical and organizational challenges.
Charles MVirtual
Awesome instructor with a sense of humor. Well read and fun!
Wendy AVancouver
I enjoyed having Mark as an instructor, he is knowledgeable on the topic, provided easy to follow examples, and has a good sense of humour. I liked how he took notes on questions people had, provided a brief answer and then provided links after the workshop so that we could follow up on the topics that interest us. The 10 min sanity breaks that he gave every hour were great as it allowed my brain to relax and then come back and focus. I really enjoyed the course, I learned lots over the 2 day workshop. I feel like 2 days might be a bit short for the course as I would have enjoyed another day of the course to learn more and refine my skills. I would recommend this course to anyone new to the scrum master role or interested in learning about scrum as it gives you a great base that you can expand.
Christopher MVirtual
Mark is Great! I took a CSM course from him 11 years ago, hence I picked this course again 11 years later.
Justin LVirtual
Truly an expert. Knows his stuff.
Denise AOttawa
Awesome. Enlightment for pain points like overtime, too many WIP, motivation, etc.
Susie LVancouver
Using Scrum to teach Scrum. Perfect.
Andrew COttawa
Mark was such a great and fun instructor! He is very knowledgeable and good at explaining Scrum in a way that can be understood by all. I would definitely recommend this course with Mark to my colleagues and team!
Audrey MVirtual
Interesting, engaging, practical exercises.
Olga HMontreal
It was a great experience coming to Agile Scrum just a few months ago allowed this to solidify a lot of things I've been practicing. I will likely immediately reap the rewards.
Curtis BOttawa
Great training. Good energy throughout the workshop. Well facilitated. I liked the regular breaks. Good combination of both breakout room exercises and whole group learnings. Good use of technology for a virtual workshop.
Carole GVirtual
Interesting and original and knowledgeable.
Liliana MOttawa
I enjoyed this interactive class with Mark. So much more entertaining then watching slide after slide of a Powerpoint.
Shelley COttawa
Very well structured course with a good variety of topics for further research. Great interaction with class.
Yuri AVirtual
Very knowledgeable, informative, flexible in fitting situations into ideas.
Katie MOttawa
Mark did an excellent job of teaching the material and went beyond just presenting it.
Noah AEdmonton
Excellent, great management of large group, Excellent information
Susan LPrivate Client
Mark was excellent and lots of knowledge and passion about Scrum. His anecdotal stories were entertaining and informational.
Kevin MPrivate Client
Mark knows the subject very well. He was never boring. He has offered good references for us to continue studying on our own.
Melanie LPrivate Client
Excellent material, entertaining instructor. Instructor distilled the information well. Both instructor and course provided a great intro to Scrum. The course was challenging yet rewarding.
Duff KOttawa
Mark, you master it! Many thanks for making this content easy to understand.
Bertrand LVirtual
Very useful take on scrum, focused on the prod owners needs and responsibilities. Practical tools to start and plenty of other sources of info to continue growing.
Paula MToronto
He is very motivated. Mark kept us engaged as the day went fast. He was respectful and was active listener, paid attention to cues when we did not understand.
Lyne LOttawa
This course was fun and informative. The instructor was a great motivator/animator of the material. I really appreciated the efforts in engaging the audience.
Bill LMontreal
Mark uses his extensive experience in scrum training and software dev to add relevent examples which help understand SCRUM better.
Affan MPrivate Client
I love this course. It was incredibly helpful and throught provoking. I enjoyed the teach style and directness of the instructor.
Victoria MEdmonton
Mark has been a great facilitator, instructor, and extremely knowledgeable on teaching Scrum. Great analogies and references cited.
Wilfred MPrivate Client
Mark was an excellent instructor. He was patient with us and mindful of the different types of humans in the class. Even though we got behind and had to skip the last exercise I didn't feel like I was missing anything. I think the discussions were of more value than the final sprint (so good choice). I really appreciate that he is giving us all kinds of materials and pointing us to books and articles to help us. I feel very supported. Mark did a great job of getting everyone involved and keeping people engaged. Group activities were well placed. I will be sure to recommend this course.
Karen PVirtual
Interesting facilitation of a topic that could have been not so interesting.
Jeff MEdmonton
Mark was a very knowledgeable instructor and very passionate about the material. For a brand new subject area, I was very content and feeling comfortable in training (which usually is not the normal case). Whatever little pre-knowledge I had, this was a very great course. I took my own notes by hand and will strive the use the material as much as possible where I can. I did all of the pre-work and it definitely helped. Thank you for the training !
Brian BVirtual
Very informed, prepared, punctual, and entertaining instructor. Took time to answer all questions, fully and with examples. Took lunch time to discuss specific questons. Course was structured well, with plenty of exercises and additional reading.
Hary MToronto
Mark Levison was very effective in delivering the material for the class. He kept it interesting and interactive even though this was an online course.
Marie LVirtual
Mark is totally wonderfully weird and knowledgeable.
Sarah MOttawa
Second course with Mark went great. I have to figure out how to afford more?
David HMontreal

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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Learn on-the-job applications of key Scrum concepts, skills, principles, along with practical solutions that you can apply the next day for difficult, real-life situations.

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With focus on the challenges that real teams face, and tools to dig deeper. You don’t need more boring Scrum theory. You need something you can sink your teeth into to see immediate results.

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Use Scrum knowledge to standout at work, get paid more, and impress your customer, all without burning out.

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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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