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 good presenter and knowledgeable.
Peter ZOttawa
Mark was full of energy. There was never a moment where what we were discussing wasn't interesting.
Swetha RKitchener-Waterloo
A +
Derek SOttawa
Very knowledgeable of the subject matter. Kept the pace of the course quick, which is good.
Tarek ROttawa
I applaud Mark's view on working in agile. I was able to clearly understand the fundamental core and roles of agile.
Adil SOttawa
Mark's use and incorporation of the Agile process as part of the training course was an outstanding working demostration in practice real-time. His energy, knowledge, examples, were excellent.
Paul RPrivate 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
Added some very interesting info as well as presented the material very well clearly.
Yvonne REdmonton
I've been to a few Scrum courses for the past year and I must say that this was the best course I have attended. Gracefully covered the entire subject with the right depth.
Rafael SToronto
Good course and Mark is an awesome facilitator. Loved the way Mark conducted the training.
Gajan PKitchener-Waterloo
Great Choose-Your-Own-Adventure!
Mike SOttawa
Mark was great explaining the concepts of Scrum. Practical solutions with testing and QA Implementation.
Ramya RKitchener-Waterloo
Excellent, very knowledgeable, good real world examples.
Steve OMontreal
Mark is a great instructor that gave us a lot of examples. Generated collaboration.
Francois NMontreal
The instructor was very knowledgeable and kept me interested in the content by applying real life scenarios.
Jennifer MPrivate Client
Excellent course. Recommend for people that have done some Scrum and read all the readings. Mark is a great instructor. Among best I've had.
David MEdmonton
As always, Mark is both extremely knowledgable and wildy entertaining for all things scrum.
Jennifer MOttawa
Very nice, friendly and knowledgable. Encouraging of questions and participation. Approachable and making you feel comfortable to get something wrong but grow from it.
Dan SVirtual
Mark was awesome, very enthusiastic about the subject and more importantly was very knowledgeableabout Scrum Master role and Scrum.
David OPrivate Client
Excellent work, I have a lot of ideas and appreciate the way they were introduced.
John MEdmonton
A excellent and well-delivered course. Very informative!
Warren ROttawa
Greatly impressed by the teaching style and format of the course. Much appreciate the sprint style format and the engagment level of the instructor.
Hatem NOttawa
Mark knows his stuff. Great leader. Looking forward to reading his blog.
Brian RToronto
Great background experience, a lot of passion in his speech, was able to answer even challenging questions.
Alex NPrivate Client
It is very well organized and timed. The teacher has a really deep, hands-on knowledge about the subject.
Alberto 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
Mark was able to translate his obvious expertise and experience in lay terms, putting the team at ease through humour, anecdotes and a good level of engagement.
Brendan GVirtual
Very informative and up to my expectations. I loved the availability of the instructor.
Nicolas RMontreal
Well presented material, excellent real world examples of applying scrum framework.
Brian BOttawa
Mark was great. I appreciated his directness.
James POttawa
Mark was an excllent instructor, was able to give clear examples to explain theory.
Samanthi SOttawa
Mark has been very important in teaching us the scrummaster role and scrum processes.
Maxime GMontreal
The instructor was well prepared, and extremely knowledgeable. The course was structured in a way that it was easy to follow, well structured, and easy to be engaged. All the team activities were extremely useful to put in practice the theory. I enjoyed every single one! Virtual learning is a really difficult environment, and the instructor made it look like a piece of cake, kept us engaged throughout the days. Kuddos!
Jenny CVirtual
Very easy to get along with and makes points very clearly.
Jason PToronto
Great instructor, learned a lot and enjoyed.
David POttawa
Mark is very knowledgeable and really challenges the class to engage, speak, think about the core concepts, even when it’s messy/unclear in “real world” situations. I talked to a couple of my colleagues afterward and even the ones who were having difficulty with the usefulness of Scrum in their professional lives really enjoyed the course and the instructor, myself included.
Louis BVirtual
Mark did an excellent job instructing, keeping the team focused and engaged. I really enjoyed the two days.
Mike SKitchener-Waterloo
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 appreciate the breadth and comprehensive nature of reference material. I'm excited to read more.
Stephanie AToronto
Mark was excellent - one of the best instructors I have had. Well prepared, knowledgable, and he obviously cares.
David OEdmonton
Mark Levison is a great teacher, who is very good at giving examples to answer questions. I really appreciated his genuine interest in the topic and willingness to help us all understand, and to challenge our brains. Thank you Mark!
Camilla SVirtual
Instructor was great, would continue the engaging exercises and involving people in the room.
Hussein RToronto
Using Scrum to teach Scrum. Perfect.
Andrew COttawa
Always entertaining and I feel like I learned a ton!
Michael ROttawa
Very knowledgeable instructor about scrum and software development in general.
Elizabeth GOttawa
Kept audience engaged, and kept course relevant to entire group. Brought Scrum into how the course was taught! (Neat!)
Steve BOttawa
Mark is a very engaging and thoughtful instructor and presented material that was relevent to the goup and our interests. This was an excellent course and worth the time commitment.
Victor COttawa
Mark is a great teacher and is very good at engaging people. Really gets the spark going!
Julien LMontreal
Mark made a challenging and complex process (Scrum) very clear and highlighted the benefits and opportunities in an engaging and entertaining way.
Jeremy GVancouver
Great course! Interesting and fun. Not a moment of dullness.
Roma SOttawa

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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