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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Great facilitator, very knowledgeable.
Jay TEdmonton
I really appreciated the experience as a whole. Great valuable content. Super trainer. Experienced and flexible.
Marie MOttawa
Great instructor. Lots of good feedack throughout the session that was meaningful.
Petula NToronto
Excellent communicator and educator who encourages students to think through questions. Thorough course material to get student "Ready to Rock"
Sue LToronto
I found Mark to be engaged, upbeat, and very knowledgeable.
Peter LPrivate Client
The course provided an excellent deep dive into scrum and the role of the scrum master. The instructor was very knowledgeable and well versed on the research of scrum.
Robyne LOttawa
Mark is a great teacher and is very good at engaging people. Really gets the spark going!
Julien LMontreal
Mark's session was a great combination of theory, practical exercises and real life stories that kept this learner engaged and involved. Time spent was definitely worthwhile. Thanks!
Justin LVirtual
Instructor was very clear.
May Lynn LEdmonton
Energetic. Applied scrum in practice by helping lead us to answers in many modules.
Laura LVancouver
You'll spend two great days with amazing people around and learn a lot while laughing. Take this course!
Stephane LMontreal
Great instructor - very clear and easy to follow. Makes you think.
Linda LOttawa
The course and instructor were dynamic and engaging and open to a variety of participants.
Daniel RMontreal
This course was a real eye opener and hope it will not be like preaching in the desert. You are a great orator and would love to listen to your thoughts for hours.
Marc-Andre LMontreal
Mark is very knowledgeable. He is a great instructor.
Nitin PToronto
Mark presents an honest, relatable view of Scrum and the role of the ScrumMaster using relevant and practical class exercises. The class materials are thoughtfully designed and well-adapted to a live remote learning environment. Mark answers class questions by drawing on his years of experience practicing Scrum at various organizations and background as both an educator and student of cognitive sciences. AgilePainRelief provides free resources that extend your learning beyond the classroom; look no further!
Stephane GVirtual
Mark is a very knowledgeable and respectful instructor. He kept the information interesting and engaging, and was great at adapting the focus of the content to align with the needs of the participants. The course overall accomplished its goal of providing me with a good feel for the role of a Scrum Master.
Lisa CVirtual
Calm, able to provide examples demonstrating his points.
Martin DMontreal
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
The instructor was very engaging. The material was easy to understand and his approach was reasonable and made great sense!
Ashely RPrivate Client
Great course - certainly lived up to its reputation.
Ryann MKitchener-Waterloo
Very concise, clear material. Lots of experience went into the material and live explanation.
Justin LKitchener-Waterloo
Mark is Great! I took a CSM course from him 11 years ago, hence I picked this course again 11 years later.
Justin LVirtual
Excellent source of knowledge and provided additional resources. Helped with real examples
Sean OPrivate Client
Great course, a lot of valuable information. Experienced instructor, great ability to adapt to group and real work situtations.
Karen LPrivate Client
The course was very interesting and provided enough for me to start structuring my team's work along scrum principles.
Eric DPrivate Client
Mark was very knowledgeable and walked us through Scrum using the actual technique. Very good technique.
Kevin COttawa
Mark Levison is a good coach, very knowledgeable and not boring.
Pradeep CPrivate Client
Mark was engaging, knowledgeable, well-read and provided great examples.
Warren CVancouver
Having been a scrummaster for a while, I was looking to get a refresher - but I got a whole discovery out of it.
Philippe LMontreal
Very much appreciated the training material as it has direct implication in our project methodologies.
Mizan CMontreal
Mark is an excellent instructor and has great techniques to help us understand and learn the material of the course.
Miguel NMontreal
Mark is an awesome instructor and he is very knowledgeable.
Samina CVirtual
Mark is very knowledgeable and open/fair when answering questions or comments from the class. The course did a great job of covering scrum.
Darryl COttawa
Great course, awesome instructor!
Paul-Andre PPrivate Client
Mark was very personable, easy going and knows what he was teaching. This makes the class environment more interactive and fun
Dan DVirtual
Mark is an amazing instructor-- knowledgeable, professional, but also humorous and fun. This is not one of those cookie-cutter courses, because Mark tailors the discussions to the needs of his students. It is suitable for someone new to Scrum, but also others with Scrum experience who would like to get more in-depth.
Sandy LVirtual
Well presented - effective - open to discussion - provides information that shows us better methods and resources for self learning.
Bedros NMontreal
Mark Levison was very effective in delivering the material for the class. He kept it interesting and interactive even though this was an online course.
Marie LVirtual
Best. Training. Ever.
Martin DMontreal
He explained extremely well and gave great concrete examples. Helped to see how to apply to work place.
Genevieve CMontreal
Mark is engaging and energetic. He made what could have been a dry topic quite enjoyable.
Paul BToronto
Mark is a great instructor, very educated and helpful about Scrum and Agile. The course is very thorough and way better than typical Scrum training I have attended in the past.
Rishi PToronto
The course was quite detailed and Mark gave a lot of supporting information for all the topics we touched.
Toyosi OVirtual
Mark is incredibly well prepared and professional. Best instructor I've ever had, period.
Kevin DKitchener-Waterloo
Very helpful and clear. Mark is good at pushing the boundary with good illustration.
Terry NToronto
Excellent, very knowledgeable, good real world examples.
Steve OMontreal
I truly enjoyed every minute spent in this classroom! This course has inspired me to follow my path so that my dreams come true!
Stela LVancouver
Very knowledgeable and great communication skills to explain complex concepts in simple ways.
Ricard MToronto
Very knowledgeable instructor. His experience is obvious.
Mark LMontreal

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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