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 is a lively and engaging instructor. Information was presented effectively and at a reasonable pace.
Joel DOttawa
This course has validated what I want to do for the rest of my career.
Diane KVancouver
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
I had heard great reviews of this course and I was not disappointed. Excellent materials. Excellent instructor.
Jeromy VEdmonton
Mark Levison was an excellent instructor: knowledgeable, personable, and very approachable. The course material was clear and I felt like the coverage was appropriate.
Ken MMontreal
I liked the structure of the course, presented in an agile manner to simulate real team dynamics. Enjoyed it a lot!
Michelle MMontreal
Mark was great! He kept the room energized and very engaged. His passion and pexereince were very evident. Class materials were very helpful! Great focus on how to drive results.
Aaron MPrivate Client
The instructor is well-versed in the material covered and was able to relate it to our issues without telling us how to do it. For a short course we covered a lot of ground, but I did not feel overwhelmed.
Wayne PPrivate Client
Excellent course! Not a wasted minute!
John MOttawa
Mark Levison lives and embodies the SCRUM in his courses. Never before have I felt so empowered to self-organize in a classroom setting.
Zoltan MOttawa
Very good two days with excellent discussions. Mark was very adept at provoking these discussions.
Richard MOttawa
Well spoken and obviously passionate.
Brian REdmonton
Great flow and preparation. Really knows his stuff and transfer of knowledge is good.
Sonia MMontreal
A good introduction about scrum, roles of PO, SM and team. Opened up my thoughts on how it could be applied/practiced effectively and efficiently to build a good team.
Rajesh MOttawa
Very concise, clear material. Lots of experience went into the material and live explanation.
Justin LKitchener-Waterloo
Mark is very good in delivering the Scrum Training. Thank you for not repeating the mechanics!! Thanks for assidting with the dimensions around [Private Client] environment
Jack SPrivate Client
I enjoyed the course and learned a lot. In addition to what I learned about the processes and methods I also appreciated learning the human aspect as well.
Matthew SPrivate Client
The course was excellent, loved the "agile" format. The instructor carefully included agile in most aspects of the course.
Kara SOttawa
Excellent! Useful training techniques. Useful anecdotes, exercies, and reference material.
Joel SMontreal
Very knowledgeable and very fun and interesting way to deliver the content.
Eric SToronto
Mark was highly engaged and collaborative with the class. Helped reinforce my understanding of Scrum and educate me on best practices and tools I can utilize in my work.
Faisal MToronto
Mark did a great job over the course of two days. It was a good balance of information distribution and practice of that information in small groups. The concepts covered were tied to real life work situations and that made it easier to see how you would play the role of scrum master in those situations. I appreciated the time Mark allowed for questions and discussion of the topics covered in class. The breaks offered provided a good balance with being on the camera and learning online for two days. I would recommend this course and Mark as an instructor to anyone interested in learning more about Scrum and the role of scrum master.
Jessica SVirtual
The instructor has an uncanny ability to articulate concepts and make learning fun and enjoyable.
Bilal RToronto
Mark was a great commincator of the concepts. He practiced what he preached by using SCRUM to team.
Darren MMontreal
Mark is extremely academically knowledgeable in this space. This knowledge mixed with his real world experience and ability to engage a group makes his class a delightful experience.
Melissa MPrivate Client
Mark is one of the most interesting humans I’ve had the pleasure to meet. As a student, I can tell he genuinely has our interest and development in mind when creating and delivering his workshops. I can’t say enough good things about the practical knowledge I’ve gained taking this training.
Michael RVirtual
A excellent and well-delivered course. Very informative!
Warren ROttawa
I cannot say anything but good things about the course, and have been telling many people in my org about it.
Hatem NVirtual
Concepts I learned in this course are more sticky because they were demonstrated through exercise and not just explained.
Joseph MOttawa
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
Very informative and fun learning session.
Kim KPrivate Client
Mark was able to provide valuable lessons in a short period of time. Using a variety of methods he illustrated and reinforced the key elements of scrum.
Sean BOttawa
Instructor was very well connected with the teams. Immense knowledge on Agile and Scrum.
Deepa MOttawa
He rocks! I like a lot of the tips given by him.
Fagner SMontreal
Mark is very knowledgeable and he was very patient in explaining the topics to us.
Mary Angeli MKitchener-Waterloo
The instructor and the course both were awesome.
Rajeev RToronto
Excellent instruction with deep knowledge of scrum. All questions or clarfications were answered. Provided information I can take back to my team.
Emilia KOttawa
Mark is a great teacher and is very good at engaging people. Really gets the spark going!
Julien LMontreal
The course was fun to follow and covers a lot of material. Mark keeps the class engaged and is respectful to participants.
Julie SVirtual
This course was exactly what I was looking for! Mark was a very knowledgeable and engaging instructor. I appreciated the hands-on exercises that allowed me to put the methodology into practice with my course mates and learn from the experience. The course material is also top notch. I feel ready to take the exam and put what I've learnt into practice in my workplace.
Anu PVirtual
Mark had great skills at sharing knowledge, breaking down concepts and explaining the "whys" of things.
Cedric LMontreal
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
The course was well structured. I like how Mark used the dashboard and used it like a scrum process. Mark knows the material, respect the students and teaches it well. Always open to questions. He did a great job of keeping the students engaged by asking for feedback. Even when there was a small technical glitch Mark did not lose a beat, he ploughed through. The course was enjoyable.
Peter RVirtual
I found Mark very knowledgeable for the course material and good at getting his point across.
Shawn PMontreal
Very good instructor, very knowledgeable, good facilitator.
Liz SToronto
Thanks for being so responsive and Agile in your approach to leading the class.
Deb BKitchener-Waterloo
Mark has extensive experience on which he can call on to illustrate the reason for what works and what does not.
Mark CPrivate Client
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
I like to recommend this course to other team members to help everyone get to the same mindset and understanding. I gained a clearer understanding of what Agile really is and I'd like to see it work in my future projects.
Lynda SEdmonton
Great course! Very engaging and knowlegeable instructor.
Kolin BOttawa

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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