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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Derek SOttawa
Terrific! Well thought out responses to questions. Great base of experience. Practical approach to teaching. 10/10
Edward LOttawa
This instructor was absolutely brilliant. He was very clear and knowlegable in all the areas. He was also very honest in his opinions.
Jonathan EOttawa
Great two days! Added new tools to my PO toolbox and Mark has inspired me again to improve as a PO and to improve my team's scrumming.
Binh HMontreal
Instructor is super knowledgeable and shared his wealth of expertise in a meaning manner.
Randy GPrivate Client
Mark is a great teacher. Funny, communicates his ideas well, very knowledgeable, - a great teacher! This was a good course!
Anthony DVirtual
AMAZING! Funny, interesting, engaging course!
Bassem HMontreal
The instructor did an excellent job in my opinion. He did a really good job of focusing on sections where there was more confusion and really helped make everyone feel comfortable to share and ask questions.
Sylvain FVirtual
Mark has a way to engage the group that is positive and unique. His ability to be flexible in the two days with regards to training makes the course fun.
David HOttawa
Mark has been very important in teaching us the scrummaster role and scrum processes.
Maxime GMontreal
Running the course as a Scrum project and including a real Scrum exchange really reinforced the material.
David COttawa
Excellent communicator, good at focusing on the important topics.
Mick BPrivate Client
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
This is an excellent course to take after the CSM. The instructor was excellent, the course was wonderful, the students awesome.
Marc HMontreal
Mark's ability to adapt to the background of students and relate to their org's characteristics adds exceptional value. This course isn't just for software development!
Paul AOttawa
Mark Levison is great - Excellent knowledge of the subject and a great virtual training plan. Thanks a lot.
Rajesh DVirtual
He knows his stuff!
Stephen DVancouver
Instructor was amazing, easy to listen to and follow. Did not read from book and provided concrete examples.
Tricia AOttawa
Interesting, engaging, practical exercises.
Olga HMontreal
He is funny. And smart. And a good storyteller. All together = great combo.
Melanie HEdmonton
Mark was an excellent instructor and I learned a lot in this workshop considering it was only 2 days. I would recommend it to my friends and colleagues.
Mohamed EVirtual
I found Mark very engaging and thought he helped make the material very interesting.
Jason DToronto
Mark was an informative, fun instructor who utilized the time given to him to teach us scrum.
Brendan GEdmonton
Mark's enthusiam was contagious. His energy and humor brought Scrum alive! I enjoyed the examples and many aspects we covered.
Michelle HKitchener-Waterloo
Mark was very knowledgeable and walked us through Scrum using the actual technique. Very good technique.
Kevin COttawa
Using Scrum to teach Scrum. Perfect.
Andrew COttawa
Very knowledgeable instructor, great info on theory and practice. Lots more info to cover if we had more time.
Jamie GOttawa
Mark is very insightful, knowledgable, and humourous. The topic was well covered and a delight to engage with. Great balance of peer interactions and instructor led discussions.
Peter HOttawa
Calm, able to provide examples demonstrating his points.
Martin DMontreal
Rocks! I would really recomment this instructor to others.
Raghda FToronto
Mark was an excellent teacher; explained all concepts very well.
Jackie COttawa
Amazing experience. Mark is a great inspirational mentor. Teaches me how to approach problems and think out of the box.
Ben HKitchener-Waterloo
Engaging instructor, keeps it interesting.
Yves GMontreal
Mark has good mastering on the topic, keeps the audience engaged, and effectively delivers the material to get the job done.
David KEdmonton
The course included everything I hoped to cover and Mark very well demonstrated its content.
Jerome CToronto
Course was fantastic and informative. The instructor did his best to include as much of the expensive material as he could. It was engaging and fun to listen to. I would highly recomment this training to anyone interested in the Scrum methology.
Derrick BOttawa
It was an excellent seminar. It gave us hands-on exercises. I can see lots of challenges ahead as I try to implement changes to our scrum team. Should be fun and interesting journey!
Ann Margaret GMontreal
Going into this training course my expectation was between boring and somewhat engaging as per my previous experience with training. I was pleasantly surprised. I found Mark entertaining and the course material laid out in a way as to keep the class engaged and interactive at all times. Well done. Will not hesitate to recommend your class(es) to anyone.
Jean-Michel HOttawa
Mark did a fantastic job of concisely and thoroughly describing the POs.
Dean GToronto
Excellent instructor and the course was great. A lot of thought provoking exercises that bring home the idea of scrum.
Deena SToronto
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
Really liked it, will recommend to others.
Alexey SToronto
Instructor kept the course interested, kept us engaged through fun exercises. I love the course content, the book. Well prepared reference.
Hulya AOttawa
Informative and engaging. Love the scrum training as a sprint. Flexible to address problems current teams face.
Michael SPrivate Client
The material/presentation were top notch. Demontrations/examples were very good. Instructor is enthusiastic, knowledgeable.
Norm RKitchener-Waterloo
Mark was fantastic. He really knows how to keep everyone engaged and I found the course really fun. Still subscribe to the belief that learning is done best when you're having fun so thank you :)
Sabrina AVirtual
Excellent overview of Scrum/Kanban/Agile. The technical material/theoretical material was well balanced/augments with the personal expeirences of the instructor. Highly recommend.
Dino CPrivate Client
Mark is a knowledgeable and fun person. He was able to clearly explain the concepts and facilitiate discussions and progress.
Teodor HPrivate Client
I though the class was great. I liked how the class was structured in a Scrum Agile way and how we got to choose what to focus the class time on.
Ryan DVancouver
Amazing course! Love every second of it. Mark kept us all engaged. I knew nothing about agile/scrum and now feel well equipped to make changes at work. I'd love for the rest of my team to attend.
Shravan COttawa

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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