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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Interesting and original and knowledgeable.
Liliana MOttawa
Mark is Great! I took a CSM course from him 11 years ago, hence I picked this course again 11 years later.
Justin LVirtual
Mark is an awesome instructor. A very patient instructor that welcomes all questions. He is definitely the Yoda of the Scrum universe.
Ting-Yu LToronto
Mark is very knowledgeable and VERY patient. Although I felt below the curve, he never made me feel that way through his actions.
Andy ZOttawa
This course helped me understand the principles of Agile and how to implement it to achieve better performance with any team while having a good time. Really like the balance between the exercises and the theory.
Pierre LMontreal
Covered a little of everything. Was always interesting.
Regis LMontreal
Mark is simply a very knowledgeable and engaging instructor. Great experience.
Emad MPrivate 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
Energetic. Applied scrum in practice by helping lead us to answers in many modules.
Laura LVancouver
Mark has helped me learn Agile in a fun way. The hands on experience have added value for a non-agile user like me.
Keerthiga NEdmonton
Instructor was very well connected with the teams. Immense knowledge on Agile and Scrum.
Deepa MOttawa
Instructor was well organized and touched each topic in a sequential matter that was logical.
Joe PMontreal
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
Thank you. Enjoyed your examples and how these methods can be used in the real world.
Jenna MToronto
Time master- thank you for pushing us through topics. Honestly - stated that you can provide examples, up to us to decide.
Tracey OToronto
He is very motivated. Mark kept us engaged as the day went fast. He was respectful and was active listener, paid attention to cues when we did not understand.
Lyne LOttawa
I cannot say anything but good things about the course, and have been telling many people in my org about it.
Hatem NVirtual
Excellent instructor provided engaging activites to help roleplay learning and provoke meaningful discussions.
Alice PEdmonton
Good course. In the end it is going to be us to make [Private Client] an even better company and a even better product.
Steve MPrivate Client
I recommend all newbees and Agile to take Mark's class. End of the day, you will walk out with confidence.
Hema PKitchener-Waterloo
Mark delivered an excellent course, it was a value-packed 2 days.
Brent COttawa
Mark was awesome. Kept the session engaged.
Jyoti KVirtual
He's very knowledgable and good communication. He was able to answer any question given with complete satification
Po HPrivate Client
Mark was great. Excellent sense of humor, great ability to adapt, wealth of business and sugject matter knowledge.
Jesse BPrivate Client
Great, eloquent, knowledgeable.
Mladen JToronto
Great course. Information overload but not in a bad way. I liked that we discussed specific corporate problems people were having. Helped build context in how others are using Agile/Scrum. Maybe misusing, too.
Tyler BVancouver
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
Interesting, engaging, practical exercises.
Olga HMontreal
Mark was an engaging and passionate instructor. I appreciated his concise explanations, and the time he took after his first day to discuss specifics about my organization with me.
Adam FOttawa
Very knowledgeable and great communication skills to explain complex concepts in simple ways.
Ricard MToronto
I love this course. It was incredibly helpful and throught provoking. I enjoyed the teach style and directness of the instructor.
Victoria MEdmonton
Mark did an excellent job facilitating the course and the content was very helpful. We covered a lot of ground in three sessions and the pre-learning was helpful too! Mark was patient and respectful and very supportive throughout the sessions. It was a pleasure to spend the time with Mark and to learn from someone who obviously knows his subject.
Debbie BVirtual
Mark is very knowledgeable and communicates the value of Scrum very clearly. He uses real-world examples which helps tremendously.
Matt MOttawa
Instructor was engaging, kept the interest of the class. Nice material, I really like how we got into Scrum framework right away by using the backlog analogy for the course topics.
Cecilia OOttawa
The positive focus on people and the team was excellent. Incorporating the scrum process in the actual training session is brilliant.
Michael JMontreal
Awesome work on walking us through the process.
Steven CVancouver
Mark was extremely knowledgeable, effective teacher, responded well to students and has an excellent sense of humour.
Kely BVancouver
Thumbs up! Easy to follow. Engaging and thought provoking.
Neil OPrivate Client
The variation of types of exercises kept things interesting, much better than answer questions.
Michael GOttawa
Instructor was very clear.
May Lynn LEdmonton
The instructor was very enthusiastic and knowledgeable on Agile. His teaching methods were very clever and humble, I feel that all the course attendees found him experienced and clever.
Jamin IToronto
This course was one of the best I have experienced, because we did everything instead of listening to someone talk.
Doris PPrivate Client
Energetic, clear, helpful, inspiring, a great teacher.
Nadil POttawa
Mark, you were an absolute pleasure! Thank you for a well thoughtout and enjoyable course. I've learned a lot of great tips I plan to start using immediately.
Monica CToronto
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
Having come with a very limited knowledge of Scrum, Mark did a great job of leading the class through the knowledge required. The material was engaging and there were great opportunities to work with other learners as a team to practice different elements of the knowledge. Mark is friendly and humorous which made the otherwise very intense schedule a fun experience. He consistently offered great suggestions of further reading to consider in order to better understand the many elements of this practice.
Michael HVirtual
Instructor was very passionate about subject and links theory to concrete examples.
Jean-Philippe BMontreal
This course was exactly what I was looking for! Mark was a very knowledgeable and engaging instructor. I appreciated the hands-on exercises that allowed me to put the methodology into practice with my course mates and learn from the experience. The course material is also top notch. I feel ready to take the exam and put what I've learnt into practice in my workplace.
Anu PVirtual
Lively, knowledgeable instructor who delivered the material creatively (no powerpoint! ) and made everyone comfortable.
Karen BOttawa
Lots of good information and exercises for a two day course. Instructor was clear and engaging in presenting concepts.
Marvin EPrivate Client

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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