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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Mark is the best! I came back with a colleague and I will come back again and recommend Mark's workshops to others.
Hanan SOttawa
Clear and open to questions, provides good examples that help illustrate the process.
Radu SPrivate Client
Mark L was the best instructor I've had.
David SOttawa
Very empathic torwards participants, and I admire the ability to adjust the course trajectory on the fly. Thank you for a great course!
Sophia SPrivate Client
This is one of the best courses I took. I liked the 'hands on' scrum technique. I liked the open discussions and how the instructor motivated people and kept them engaged.
Magda SOttawa
I like to recommend this course to other team members to help everyone get to the same mindset and understanding. I gained a clearer understanding of what Agile really is and I'd like to see it work in my future projects.
Lynda SEdmonton
Effective, making him do things with powerpoint would be fun to watch.
Gary SEdmonton
Mark was great! He's very knowledgeable and his understand of SCRUM is deep and polished. I enjoyed the product owner course.
Joe OEdmonton
Very good two days with excellent discussions. Mark was very adept at provoking these discussions.
Richard MOttawa
Mark appears to be knowledgeable and highly experienced in Scrum and did a great job in creating more clarity for the group on complex concepts.
Ryan RVirtual
The course was informative and engaging. It was delivered in a way that help me achieve better understanding of the material, Mark rocks!!
Akhmad SPrivate Client
Informative and engaging. Love the scrum training as a sprint. Flexible to address problems current teams face.
Michael SPrivate Client
To the point and with passion!
Colin MToronto
Mark is an excellent instructor and has great techniques to help us understand and learn the material of the course.
Miguel NMontreal
Mark provides clarity into the mystical world of Agile and Scrum with practical examples and Jedi wisdom. Add some psychosocial games into the batch and your in for an adventure. Training will test not just your ability to obtain facts, but leave you pondering the cavernous opportunities for the scum master to be an agent of organizational change.
Petrus BVirtual
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
Very knowledgeable instructor about scrum and software development in general.
Elizabeth GOttawa
Appreciated the flexibility of discussing things out of order as team comments took us there. Enjoyed interactive format, no slides. Helpful workbook.
Annette GPrivate Client
Pragmatic, no nonsense & applied = very good!
Francois-Pierre MMontreal
The course was fun to follow and covers a lot of material. Mark keeps the class engaged and is respectful to participants.
Julie SVirtual
I really enjoyed Mark, despite not being my sector I was able to make connections and take away information.
Catherine BOttawa
Mark was fantastic! He explained the concepts very clearly and kept the class very engaging for the 2 days. He has a wealth of experience and was able to convey that to the class (plus the fun soap box moments).
Anthony GVirtual
Interesting personality and presentation style. Instructor's views align well with my own -> don't continue doing 'insane' things
Brad LEdmonton
Awesome!! Very captivating, approachable and well spoken. Provoked conversation and posed questions in a manner that made you think
Katherine HKitchener-Waterloo
Excellent instructor. Left lots of room for us to think by ourselves. Great!
Kathleen LVancouver
The CSM course was extremely valuable in understanding the theorotical and practical concepts and techniques necessary to start my journey as Scrum Master. Mark was a knowledgeable and flexible facilitor.
Erik GToronto
Mark is a great instructor who clearly understands his subject matter and continuously engages with his students in order to make his presentations dynamic and memorable. He maintained a good pace throughout the workshop while always ensuring that questions were answered and that nobody would be left behind. Thanks Mark!
Mikael SVirtual
Mark is great and the course is very valuable. I really appricate your time and patience. We covered a lot of mtaterial which is great.
William DOttawa
There was not a single bit of content that wasn't helpful.
Bruno PMontreal
Excellent instruction and examples on how to combine Scrum with the realities of a corporate enviroment.
Kevin SOttawa
Very interesting course, useful information, good class structure and handouts.
Jialin MPrivate Client
Mark did a fantastic job. [Private Client] was a unique challenge of a long history with hardened habits, as well as a very peculiar definition of Agile and SCRUM.
Imran APrivate Client
Mark is excellent. He uses examples that are very clear to everyone. He is patient and ensures everyone understands the material.
Emmanuel BMontreal
I found the instructor extremely engaging and very knowledgeable about the subject. The time flew by!
Granville GOttawa
Mark presented very well. Class well organized. Liked the zoo activity and actually applying the scrum guidleines to a sprint.
Laurel PEdmonton
Very well organized; clear instructions; experienced instructor; useful prep work; dynamic and encouraged individuals participation; perfect breaks; excellent material.
Ana PVirtual
Mark did a wonderful job of coaching and supporting the class participants throughout the entire SCRUM course. Even though this was the first virtual class attempt, the choice of tools did a wonderful job of making all of us feel as if we were actually working together in person. Mark’s use of a working agreement right off the get go allowed everyone in the class to not only buy into the value of these agreements but also participate in its enforcement over the two days. Mark provided numerous references and examples from his vast wealth of experience which provided richness to the content. Overall, the course was a great experience and I will definitely encourage others to seek a future opportunity to enroll in one of Mark’s courses.
Glen SVirtual
Mark Levison’s Agile Pain Relief was a wonderful, immersive introduction into the world of Scrum. He is an engaging, thoughtful and well prepared instructor. The course activities were interactive, informative and really served to engrain and apply Scrum knowledge. I would highly recommend this course to anyone looking to become a CSM.
Wes KVirtual
I had the best two days of practical training on Agile. Instructor has logical answers to my questions.
Angie EEdmonton
Mark is very well read, with lots of breadth. Mark helped to challenge participants' ways of thinking that could impede scrum implementation.
Louise BOttawa
Very informative and up to my expectations. I loved the availability of the instructor.
Nicolas RMontreal
Mark was good - foundatian of knowledge and his experiences made for good practical examples.
Mike AMontreal
Mark is extremely well informed on the subject matter and made it extremely easy to comprehend. I find his ability to articulate his thoughts and teachings very impressive, and it's easy to see how intelligent he is.
Alexandria SOttawa
The instructor is very knowledgeable in the subject and kept us motivated and alert during the course. The course itself covers lots of material which is necessary for someone who wants to become a successful scrum master.
Elena RVirtual
The instructor and the course both were awesome.
Rajeev RToronto
Very knowledgeable and pleasant to work with.
Kristian BEdmonton
Mark was very knowledgeable and he led the course as a Scrum Master; the whole team was always engaged and participated in discussion.
Sanja SToronto
Mark is very knowledgable. He provided interesting background on errors/mistakes committed by Scrum teams.
Prabh SToronto
Mark was the best instructor that I have learned from. His style of delivery is very crisp and enjoyable. Loved every minute of it.
Rajiv MToronto
This was agreat intro to formal scrum fundamentals. Mark was always engaging.
John LKitchener-Waterloo

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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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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