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 unique training style, really appreciate that I don’t have to look at power point screen. Appreciate the Q&As and the end of class recap round.
Vicky CPrivate Client
Mark did an excellent job. I appreciated the hands-on nature of the training wherein we actually tried to do Scrum. He was patient handling all our questions and issues, and managed to keep us engaged despite being on Zoom.
Dan MVirtual
Excellent. Would recommend any time.
Cindy IEdmonton
Mark is fun and engaging and has a great way of importing information in a memorable way.
Brittany LOttawa
This was a good course. Plenty of offline reading and later reference. For a full two day course, I am informed but not exhausted.
Chris GKitchener-Waterloo
Mark did an awesome job. He is very knowledgable, helpful, and patient. I will recommend this course for sure.
Jamal EToronto
Instructor was very welcoming and inclusive. He's very positive and polite. More importantly, he's knowledgable and experienced.
Dyan LToronto
Terrific! Well thought out responses to questions. Great base of experience. Practical approach to teaching. 10/10
Edward LOttawa
Mark is very insightful, knowledgable, and humourous. The topic was well covered and a delight to engage with. Great balance of peer interactions and instructor led discussions.
Peter HOttawa
Mark was great. He definitely understands and believes in what he is teaching. He made sure to go slowly and would always check to see if we understood.
Adrien GVirtual
The course and exercise were well designed to add value compared to reading about Scrum. Mark is an effective presenter, keeping things interesting and (often) entertaining.
Gordon EPrivate Client
Really liked the approach by Mark to apply Scrum methodology to this training. Also Mark was available to answer questions and patient.
Damien JOttawa
Came back to take my CSPO specifically with Mark for a reason. Amazing Instructor.
Daniel LMontreal
Mark did a fantastic job of concisely and thoroughly describing the POs.
Dean GToronto
5 Stars
Yui HEdmonton
Excellent! Packed in a lot in the limited time without making it overwhelmning.
Ayan KMontreal
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 great at explaining processes to entry level product owners, and is definitely one of the most knowledgeable people in the field. I'd be definitely interested in more of his courses.
Blake KVirtual
Overall very well structured course. It helped me see the benefits of Scrum and learned how to apply it.
Nazir EOttawa
I found Mark to be engaging, informative and entertaining. His answers to class questions were well thought out, practical and helpful. He did a very good job handling the various personalities and keeping things on track.
Brad GVirtual
Mark was very well prepared with the material and handled questions well. You gave us enough information to address our own issues without giving us the solution.
Ramiz IPrivate Client
Mark was awesome. Engaging and interactive. Course material is detailed but not overwhelming.
Adam DToronto
Great session overall. Appreciate your openness and honesty.
Lisa FToronto
Course: great content! Instructor: excellent and very knowledgeable on the subject.
Nadeem FEdmonton
Mark was an informative, fun instructor who utilized the time given to him to teach us scrum.
Brendan GEdmonton
Very passionate and knowledgeableinstructor, and very able to answer any question.
Zain JEdmonton
Instructor very knowledgeable, supportive, and a great coach.
Jay BVancouver
Awesome instructor with a sense of humor. Well read and fun!
Wendy AVancouver
The course was awesome with great instructor. It was great to have the groups for exercices and then discuss with trainer.
Françoise DVirtual
Very patient. Really liked the group activity where we had to work in Sprints on user stories.
Anita AVirtual
Thank you. It has been one of the most interesting courses I have attended.
Hemant KToronto
Mark is a great presenter. I appreciate that he is to the point and succinct in his points, but can expand when prompted. I appreciate that there was room for "derailment" and that the training was made more custom tailored to the individual experiences of the scrum masters at our org. The subject matter was good. I think it contained a lot of the info that new scrum masters don't think about, and covered a lot of traps that they fall into.
Adel AVirtual
Course was great and enjoyable. Lots of make you think kind of questions.
Andrew FOttawa
Mark rocks! His extensive real world experience combined with his depth of knowledge of Scrum processes and tools made for a superior learning opportunity with lots of fun along the way. Highly recommend!
Steven CPrivate Client
Mark is great and explained dry terms with examples.
Xueyan BPrivate Client
Great use of time. Very clear examples of work life situations.
Duane BToronto
Extremely knowledgable on all material covered. Tons of experience and real world examples to pull from. Knowledgable on all material covered as well as periphery topics. Funny, engaging, and helped class feel they added value.
Steve DKitchener-Waterloo
Mark is an awesome instructor! The course was very valuable and useful.
Chandni LToronto
Lively, knowledgeable instructor who delivered the material creatively (no powerpoint! ) and made everyone comfortable.
Karen BOttawa
Very passionate and organized, kept material interesting.
Sjoerd FEdmonton
Mark was great. Excellent sense of humor, great ability to adapt, wealth of business and sugject matter knowledge.
Jesse BPrivate Client
Great agenda, engaging instructor, relevant examples and exercises. 10/10 rating
Ed AVancouver
Rocks! I would really recomment this instructor to others.
Raghda FToronto
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
Passionate, Articulate, Well organized, and knowledgeable. Highly recommended
Nick KVancouver
Awesome, really. Energizing course, I learned a lot and feel empowered - Thank you!
Benoit FOttawa
Thanks for being so responsive and Agile in your approach to leading the class.
Deb BKitchener-Waterloo
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
Insightful material, engaging classroom practice.
Eliza BVirtual
Mark is an awesome instructor and has great patience dealing with attendees virtually. His knowledge is spot on and he tries to answer all the questions given the time constraint.
Harjot DVirtual

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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Explore what Scrum is and how to make it work for you in our Scrum Certification training. Hands-on learning will guide you to improve teamwork, deliver quick feedback, and achieve better products and results.

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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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