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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I enjoyed this interactive class with Mark. So much more entertaining then watching slide after slide of a Powerpoint.
Shelley COttawa
Course was informative and entertaining. There was good participant involvement and useful examples.
George COttawa
Great workshop by Mark. Level of engagement to collaboration were awesome!
Jason QEdmonton
Fantastic instructor and couse. I learned so much, thank you!
Jeremy CKitchener-Waterloo
Very much appreciated the training material as it has direct implication in our project methodologies.
Mizan CMontreal
Using Scrum to teach Scrum. Perfect.
Andrew COttawa
Mark is engaging and energetic. He made what could have been a dry topic quite enjoyable.
Paul BToronto
Mark was very personable, easy going an know what he was teaching. This makes the class environment more interactive and fun.
Asif BVirtual
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
Great to get this training from the subject matter expert.
Nisha AToronto
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
Very knowledgeable, led the session very well.
Bob BPrivate Client
Instructor is very knowledgeable and delivers the course extremely well. Makes it interesting!
Brian APrivate Client
Tons of material to get through, Mark did well with the contextual questions from our organization.
Brendan BPrivate Client
I truly enjoyed the Scrum Master course. Mark shares industry knowledge so it is not just theory. The material/boards were easy to understand.
Yuri AVirtual
Excellent presentation. Challenging contributing questions.
Zeki AMontreal
Mark was exceptional in introducing us to the Scrum world. Contents in the Mural was well formulated, informative and crisp. Mark was open to discussion and provided alternative options for real time issues faced by participant. He was able to create traps so that we can get the real insight of scrum's events. Overall, I am amazed the way Mark covered the whole session. I am looking forward to go through his new upcoming book.
Birendra KVirtual
Instructor was clearly knowledgable and many examples were given. I was able to follow with nearly no prior scrum/Agile experience.
Kevin KOttawa
Amazing instructor! Makes you feel like he knows from ages! Very interactive class.
Kaushik KVirtual
This is an excellent course to take after the CSM. The instructor was excellent, the course was wonderful, the students awesome.
Marc HMontreal
Mark is a gifted teacher who really takes the time to ensure those who take his ScrumMaster course understand the topics and know how to apply scrum to their particular company and role. His use of group activities help turn concepts that can intially seem very unspecific into concrete examples and true understanding, which is especially helpful to those of us who are not software engineers or in a technical field. I would highly recommend Mark and Agile Pain Relief to those looking for a ScrumMaster course.
Rhiannon BVirtual
Kept audience engaged, and kept course relevant to entire group. Brought Scrum into how the course was taught! (Neat!)
Steve BOttawa
Did a great job getting the information across. Provided real-world examples and concrete solutions that were helpful. Q&A throughout added a lot.
Jacob DPrivate Client
Mark had great skills at sharing knowledge, breaking down concepts and explaining the "whys" of things.
Cedric LMontreal
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
Great class. Great instructor! I will recommend!
Kim KMontreal
Mark was awesome. Kept the session engaged.
Jyoti KVirtual
Fantastic course. I am excited about implementing more of what I learned.
Andrew BToronto
Mark was engaging and patient. He got everyone involved and kept spirits and energy levels high.
David BPrivate Client
Mark is a knowledgeable and fun person. He was able to clearly explain the concepts and facilitiate discussions and progress.
Teodor HPrivate Client
Amazing course! Love every second of it. Mark kept us all engaged. I knew nothing about agile/scrum and now feel well equipped to make changes at work. I'd love for the rest of my team to attend.
Shravan COttawa
Remarkable! Knowledgeable! Relatable! Mark's style was a style that I can relate to. I was engaged. Enjoyed the variety of explanations, sharing screens, working with my team mates. The overall structure and delivery of the training material exceeded my expectations.
Brenda DVirtual
Course was great. Mark was terrific! Kept us involved and thinking.
Anne DPrivate Client
He is funny. And smart. And a good storyteller. All together = great combo.
Melanie HEdmonton
Great course. Lots of fun and learning. Thanks!
Edgar DVancouver
Very engaging way of learning how to be a Product Owner, just like Scrum should be.
Teeba APrivate Client
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
I had made one course already (Scrum Master) a couple of years back, and again Mark did not disappoint, good empathy, great presence and vibrant (even through virtual activities) always appreciate the good vibes. Content is serious but Mark knows how to go beyond simply handing out his knowledge, he makes it an experience.
Romain HVirtual
Good course and instructor was great. I didn't fall asleep once.
Samsong CEdmonton
Mark did a great job of bringing the group into the basic tenets of Agile-Scrum whenever someone brought up a challenge/issue in the participant's particular situation.
Eric AMontreal
Very interactive. Even though I was jet-lagged and sick, I enjoyed the class and did not fall asleep.
Negar HToronto
Mark is exceptionally knowledgeable and offered many useful tibits I can better my organization with.
James ROttawa
The CSM course rocks! If you want to immediately jump into the action and improve as you go, this is it. You'll start off as a group of strangers, and find out how quickly you can build a high-performance team. And, if you separately want to read every comprehensive detail there is to know about scrum, Mark will share that with you too.
Nicole BVirtual
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 has a great style of delivery even over zoom. He kept my attention and that of the class by using humor and explaining things very matter of factly. Therefore no confusion and the information actually stuck. He understands what it takes to deliver an engaging session by having a number of break out activities that were fun and comfortable. Thank you Mark!
Deborah RVirtual
Mark is very knowledgeable. He is a great instructor.
Nitin PToronto
Awsome course, Learned an amazing amout. Mark is fun and an interesting man. He made learning fun.
Donna REdmonton
I thought it was extremely effective. It re-enforced some good practices already in place but showed what is missing in my environment.
Robert JEdmonton
Excellent instructor providing clear explanations. The course structure is flawless.
Benoit NMontreal
Excellent, material and discussion was perfect.
Jacques CVirtual

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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