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! Humour is a plus too!
Daryl BVancouver
Mark is totally wonderfully weird and knowledgeable.
Sarah MOttawa
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
I've taken many courses over the years and this was the most educational, enjoyable experience with valuable activities and worthwhile, well-researched content.
Ron WEdmonton
The whole course was both helpful and valuable. I found Mark to be knowledgeable and engaging.
Tim MPrivate Client
Mark is very knowledgeable on the subject and always had good arguments to overcome the "we couldn't do this in our organization".
Sebastien DPrivate Client
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
I enjoyed the hands-on nature of the course and Mark's presentation style. My mind was blown several times in the two days which was unexpected and completely awesome.
Heather OEdmonton
Excellent, expert, engaging, humourous, I would strongly recommend any course offered by Mark!
Tod MVancouver
Mark's knowledge and real world examples have cleared up my knowledge of scrum, the roles and responsibilities of the scrum team, and what I need to implement in my organization.
Greg MEdmonton
Very unique training style, really appreciate that I don’t have to look at power point screen. Appreciate the Q&As and the end of class recap round.
Vicky CPrivate Client
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 presentation skills. Excellent materials for study (in class and via email). Good tips and pragmatic approach. Good experience and info from the trenches.
Luiza DToronto
Mark you are a rockstar and I truly enjoyed and hopefully benefit.
Kerry OPrivate Client
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
Enjoyed the course. (Mark) made it interesting/fun. Content presented in digestible format.
Brett MPrivate Client
Mark is very knowledgeable and is great at simplifying and illustrating abstract concepts.
Thierry LMontreal
Great course. I learned enough to get me started doing Scrum. The instructor really knows the content and made pleasant and dynamic the delivery.
Carlos MPrivate Client
Extremely knowledgable on all material covered. Tons of experience and real world examples to pull from. Knowledgable on all material covered as well as periphery topics. Funny, engaging, and helped class feel they added value.
Steve DKitchener-Waterloo
Excellent. Well worth money and time.
David MOttawa
Very informative. Well presented. Good tempo.
Robert 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
Great course, a lot of valuable information. Experienced instructor, great ability to adapt to group and real work situtations.
Karen LPrivate Client
Course was informative and entertaining. There was good participant involvement and useful examples.
George COttawa
After 24+ years of traditional thinking, this was refreshing and new. Can't wait to begin implementing at work. Thanks, Mark!
Kristine NEdmonton
Provided excellent understanding of scrum, more difficult concepts with a very hands on approach.
Carmen CToronto
I learned a lot and the content was far more enganging than I expected it to be. I come away with many improvements I can make to my organization. Thanks and well done.
Dan CKitchener-Waterloo
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
Excellent course, great depth of knowledge from the instructor, well paced and well run.
Kurt OEdmonton
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
Very good introduction to my new role. Mark leads lively and thought-provoking discussions.
Bob COttawa
Mark is Great! I took a CSM course from him 11 years ago, hence I picked this course again 11 years later.
Justin LVirtual
Great course instructor is very knowledgeable in agile and scrum mastery. Great work relating real life examples to course material and helping to start thinking.
Autem DEdmonton
Class was fun and instructive. Mark was a great help, understanding and pushed our creative thinking and problems solving abilities further. Thank you!
Caroline DMontreal
Mark is a great teacher and is very good at engaging people. Really gets the spark going!
Julien LMontreal
Mark is very easy to listen to. He is knowledgeable and keeps the class engaged. He has a lot of experience.
Lori CToronto
Very well done course. Very experienced, knowledgeable instructor, well structured course, clear explanation, keeps nice spirit during the course, encourages collaboration.
Dina DMontreal
The instructor was very good and demonstrated a clear knowledge of scrum and its principles. Hope to bring this knowledge with me into my company.
Kevin AToronto
Mark was intensely knowledgeable, humorous, and a bit off-beat. Initially I was skeptical of his abilites to engage the totality of the group but as the course progressed he appeared to fully succeed.
David OEdmonton
Mark is an awesome instructor and has great patience dealing with attendees virtually. His knowledge is spot on and he tries to answer all the questions given the time constraint.
Harjot DVirtual
A lot to learn and a lot to cover for Scrum. Mark was living the art of scrum and set a role model of time box.
Dang DVancouver
Great instructor with clever communication techniques to help the attendees grasp ideas.
Asad BKitchener-Waterloo
Where to start ........ Mark you have a mind filled with knowledge not sure how you can keep it all straight!!! I took scrum training last year at [Private Client] and I really enjoyed taking it again with you. Scrum is scrum but the flavor you brought to it kept me engaged and it made the workshop fun. I was always looking forward in coming back and hearing more. I enjoyed the experiences and all the references you provided. I have to admit after the first day I went to bed at night and was thinking about Scrum. How am I going to do this at work, what experiments can I run, how can I change up my retro’s so they aren’t boring and everyone wants to join. The course is well structured and the material we covered was just the right amount. We went into enough detail where needed and at a higher level for others. The course allowed us to ask for more content and we always had an opportunity to ask questions before moving on. Thank you for this fantastic workshop.
Josee CVirtual
Great instructor. Lots of good feedack throughout the session that was meaningful.
Petula NToronto
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
Mark was a great instructor! Very enthusiastic about the course and assisting its participants in becoming successful product owners. Incredibly knowledgeable and entertaining.
Elizabeth CToronto
Great agenda, engaging instructor, relevant examples and exercises. 10/10 rating
Ed AVancouver
Thank you Mark for the amazing training and for the useful tips you shared!
Manal DVirtual
Very good two days with excellent discussions. Mark was very adept at provoking these discussions.
Richard MOttawa
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

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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Everything you need to earn your Scrum Alliance® ScrumMaster certification, including exam fee and membership, and so much more.

Practical Exercises

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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This workshop is not just for software development or people with a computer science degree. We’ve helped many non-software teams with Scrum.

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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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