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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Anyone looking to do this course...do it with Mark! His passion for all things “Scrum and Agile” shines through and excites his students. He’s a “scrum” realist with a fantastic sense of humour! The material is relevant today and Mark gives us a glimpse of what we can expect 5 years from now. The post class support is fantastic and shows how passionate and knowledgeable Mark is about “learning!” A true educator!
Roberta PVirtual
Awesome!! Very captivating, approachable and well spoken. Provoked conversation and posed questions in a manner that made you think
Katherine HKitchener-Waterloo
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
Mark was a very good lively instructor who cared for all the questions. I am normally a quiet person, but I felt safe enough to speak up and answer questions.
Brenna GEdmonton
Mark did an excellent job keeping the course dynamic and informative. I would have loved a few more days to really dig into some subjects.
Tim KPrivate Client
Mark is awesome! I really enjoyed both courses I took with him. I much prefer in-person interaction to virtual, but his approach worked well.
Nicole BVirtual
Thank you. It has been one of the most interesting courses I have attended.
Hemant KToronto
Knows course material well. Quick to answer all questions.
Michael BEdmonton
Mark was very approachable, friendly, and knowledgable. He has done a great job in helping someone like me who doesn't belong to a corporate world learn so much about scrum in 2 days!
Mashiat FToronto
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
Amazing instructor! Makes you feel like he knows from ages! Very interactive class.
Kaushik KVirtual
Mark, you master it! Many thanks for making this content easy to understand.
Bertrand LVirtual
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
Instructor was clearly knowledgable and many examples were given. I was able to follow with nearly no prior scrum/Agile experience.
Kevin KOttawa
Very knowledgeable and interesting. I appreciated that he respected the outline and timeframes.
Caroline DVirtual
Awesome speaker. Fantastic course.
Helen KMontreal
Very knowledgeable instructor about scrum and software development in general.
Elizabeth GOttawa
Instructor was great and dialed into the topic. He was also effective at managing differing opinions.
Scott BVirtual
Energetic. Applied scrum in practice by helping lead us to answers in many modules.
Laura LVancouver
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
Really enjoyed Mark's presonal anecdotes and humour. Very clear that Mark is knowledgeable and I look forward to diving into the numerous references for "extra reading".
Naomi MOttawa
Well versed in knowledge and provided great "philosophical" thinking towards solutions to problems at work. Fun and approachable. Encourages solution formulation yourself.
Kang CKitchener-Waterloo
Fantastic overview of everything PO, Agile, Scrum. Learning how to manage and maintain a collaborative product backlog will be so valuable.
Elizabeth MPrivate Client
Great job, easy to understand and fun.
Matt CKitchener-Waterloo
Engaging instructor, keeps it interesting.
Yves GMontreal
The course provided an excellent deep dive into scrum and the role of the scrum master. The instructor was very knowledgeable and well versed on the research of scrum.
Robyne LOttawa
Solid course, instructor was knowledgeable and friendly. I liked how it felt like a conversation and not a presentation, so I had pretty high engagement.This subject feels like an applied art, not a list of facts for memorization.
Michael RVirtual
Training was excellent with good interaction. Knowledge sharing is good. Course was practically and informative. Mark Levison is enthusiastic with English subtle sense of humour and really aware of what he is explaining. The course helped to build confidence, valuable experiences and learning.
Yana KVirtual
Mark is an awesome instructor who does an excellent job of describing Scrum. Brilliant course!
Tom BEdmonton
Great flow and preparation. Really knows his stuff and transfer of knowledge is good.
Sonia MMontreal
Interesting facilitation of a topic that could have been not so interesting.
Jeff MEdmonton
Excellent. Well worth money and time.
David MOttawa
I felt a great sense of relief that I could do something to improve how my team delivers software.
Stephen GPrivate Client
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
Mark was really engaging and very knowledgeable.
Samantha BPrivate Client
Mark was amazing and held my attention throughout both days. Very relatable scenarios in real world.
Jerry HKitchener-Waterloo
Very knowledgeable and experienced, thanks!
Kendall OVancouver
Well organized, skillfully motivates the team and demonstrates excellent practical examples
Hanna MVirtual
All topics were covered and mastered incredibly well. Could confirm his wide knowledge and experience using and explaining scrum.
Lenin QMontreal
The content of the course covered most of things I was looking for. Mark is a knowledgeable instructor and was able to answer all of the queries the class had.
Ramandeep MEdmonton
Class was fun and instructive. Mark was a great help, understanding and pushed our creative thinking and problems solving abilities further. Thank you!
Caroline DMontreal
Mark was an awesome instructor, engaging, and very informative and knowledgable.
Tanya BToronto
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
I had a great time and I highly appreciated the experience demonstrated by the instructor.
Frederick LMontreal
Instructor was very invested in the material. Very knowledgeable and relatable.
Alan MEdmonton
Course was informative and entertaining. There was good participant involvement and useful examples.
George COttawa
Honestly, the course was way better than expected and worked virtually. I was really nervous about how this would work. Enjoyed the course. It could almost be another 1/2 day in length. The instructor is very knowledgeable. I was a bit worried about the 'virtual' format, but it was so well designed that it worked so well. Kudos! The prep work is important to do - glad it's a requirement.
Dwight MVirtual
This was agreat intro to formal scrum fundamentals. Mark was always engaging.
John LKitchener-Waterloo
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 knowledgeable and great communication skills to explain complex concepts in simple ways.
Ricard MToronto

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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