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).

We've helped 8000+ people find success using Scrum

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Mark is simply a very knowledgeable and engaging instructor. Great experience.
Emad MPrivate Client
Made me THINK!!! Provided Framework
Mike CPrivate Client
Mark was a great instructor with real-world knowledge and experience. He made the course fun and interesting. He was very patient and answered all questions; offered follow up reading material and books.
Tania DVirtual
He's very knowledgable and good communication. He was able to answer any question given with complete satification
Po HPrivate Client
Extremely enlightening. Put a lot of elements into proper context. Great foundation.
Yvan NMontreal
Mark has a great attitude and was very informative. I liked the recommendations for external resources when he reached the limit of his knowledge and/or time.
Jason TKitchener-Waterloo
Mark knows his stuff. Great leader. Looking forward to reading his blog.
Brian RToronto
Mark was great and full of recommendations. He was also very knowledgeable and able to answer all our questions.
Chris MPrivate Client
Very knowledgeable and great communication skills to explain complex concepts in simple ways.
Ricard MToronto
Great job Mark! Training was excellent. I now know what REAL scrum is and feel equipped to continue learning and practicing true scrum principles.
Cornelus MVirtual
This course was an essential intro for me, a noob in Scrum. I was guided through material I need to know, while at the same time allowed to explore concepts on my own.
Vanessa MToronto
Instructor was very passionate about subject and links theory to concrete examples.
Jean-Philippe BMontreal
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
Instructor was very knowledgeable and expressed his thoughts honestly and concisely. Course was very informative.
Lorne APrivate Client
Mark was good - foundatian of knowledge and his experiences made for good practical examples.
Mike AMontreal
Great instructor with clever communication techniques to help the attendees grasp ideas.
Asad BKitchener-Waterloo
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
Very good two days with excellent discussions. Mark was very adept at provoking these discussions.
Richard MOttawa
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
Mark was amazing and held my attention throughout both days. Very relatable scenarios in real world.
Jerry HKitchener-Waterloo
Awesome course. I will be able to apply a number of concepts immediately to help our effectiveness at work.
Daryl PEdmonton
I thought Mark did a great job. Never missed a beat and gave us a great experience
Sahan DOttawa
The course does an excellent job in this covid world. Lots was learned even though I have been working in an agile environment for years. Would certainly return to Agile Pain Relief if I decide to pursue future training.
Robert AVirtual
Mark was a great instructor who did a great job keeping us focused and teaching us about scrum and its benefits.
Frank DToronto
Mark is knowledgable and engaging. What I liked the most was that he stood his ground if anyone challenged what he taught (respectfully) and offered an explanation why.
Andrea MOttawa
Mark shared valuable information and advice about Scrum theory. I am now clear on many Agile views on different aspects, especially, Roadmap.
Syed AToronto
Course was informative and entertaining. There was good participant involvement and useful examples.
George COttawa
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
Mark is a knowledgeable and fun person. He was able to clearly explain the concepts and facilitiate discussions and progress.
Teodor HPrivate Client
Great course Mark! I really enjoyed learning more about the framwork and listening to others point of view.
Sarah MToronto
Mark did a great job of purposefully making us all feel included and engaged with his class. He added great clarity to the budding scrum process that has taken over in my workplace. I have seen many versions and perspectives on scrum values that deviate and distort how scrum would work, but I am now confident I can facilitate with my projects and team, using a much clearer scrum.
Charlene FVirtual
Mark knows his stuff and delivers a highly interactive and animated training.
Ted MPrivate Client
Very knowledgable and lots of references. Puts things into context and gives lots of examples to relate to many businesses.
Brent MEdmonton
Excellent work, I have a lot of ideas and appreciate the way they were introduced.
John MEdmonton
Mark's ability to adapt to the background of students and relate to their org's characteristics adds exceptional value. This course isn't just for software development!
Paul AOttawa
Mark is very easy to listen to. He is knowledgeable and keeps the class engaged. He has a lot of experience.
Lori CToronto
The course was very helpful by reinforcing my commitment to scrum team responsibilty and ownership. Mark was an excellent instructor, knowledgeable, professional, and in control.
Adrian GPrivate Client
Mark inspires you to make yourself better in the roles which makes your workplace better. I wish he could come to my place of employ to get us setup to succeed. Might have to look into that.
Jackie MEdmonton
Mark was very personable, easy going an know what he was teaching. This makes the class environment more interactive and fun.
Asif BVirtual
The class progress and keeping us engaged was great.
Bikash SToronto
Mark delivered the course exceptionally well.
Amjad GEdmonton
Another excellent course! Great balance of theory, exercises, and anecdotes.
Adam BOttawa
Fantastic course. I am excited about implementing more of what I learned.
Andrew BToronto
This is my third course with Mark. I enjoy his courses and his humor. He really knows how to connect with the group. He is a wealth of knowledge related to agile and scrum and he provies a lot of great advice on how to solve our problems at work.
Shelley COttawa
The instructor did a great job in getting people to participate and make sure everyone followed along.
George HPrivate Client
The simulations and exercises were extremely useful in the understanding of the concept. Mark made the course thoroughly enjoyable. Extremely pleased by the techniques used and the content of the course.
Dhaval SOttawa
Lively, knowledgeable instructor who delivered the material creatively (no powerpoint! ) and made everyone comfortable.
Karen BOttawa
Very good and useful information. I like the format (no boring Powerpoint) and doing the meeting as a sprint was great.
Fred BPrivate Client
Great facilitation techniques often used as a regular classroom teacher (i.e. rephrasing, simplificaion, observing, hinting, investigative learning).
Mike PMontreal
Fantastic course, fantastic instructor! A perfect mix of discussion and practical exercise that keeps you engaged.
Paul SVirtual

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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About this course

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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Relatable Scenarios

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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Everything you need to earn your Scrum Alliance® ScrumMaster certification, including exam fee and membership, and so much more.

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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.

Ongoing Support

Your learning doesn’t stop when the workshop ends. You get lifetime access to all course materials, plus a followup email series designed to reinforce your learning objectives and help you apply what you’ve learned on the job.