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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This course was one of the best I have experienced, because we did everything instead of listening to someone talk.
Doris PPrivate Client
Great course and material, I loved the theoretical information with was applied on day 2. Mark did a great job of relating everything to real work examples.
Michael FToronto
Great energy. Interesting course material.
Julie CToronto
The course does an excellent job in this covid world. Lots was learned even though I have been working in an agile environment for years. Would certainly return to Agile Pain Relief if I decide to pursue future training.
Robert AVirtual
A great course for those who wish to change their conventional PM perspective to a more open and agile one.
Catherine HMontreal
Great training. Good energy throughout the workshop. Well facilitated. I liked the regular breaks. Good combination of both breakout room exercises and whole group learnings. Good use of technology for a virtual workshop.
Carole GVirtual
Amazing instructor, very clear and breaks our pre-conceived understandings.
Jean-Francois BMontreal
Mark is quick-witted, experienced, blunt, and plays role of a neutral facilitaor very well. He made three content heavy days digestible, relevant to my work life, and enjoyable.
Craig BPrivate Client
Mark was a very knowledgeable instructor and very passionate about the material. For a brand new subject area, I was very content and feeling comfortable in training (which usually is not the normal case). Whatever little pre-knowledge I had, this was a very great course. I took my own notes by hand and will strive the use the material as much as possible where I can. I did all of the pre-work and it definitely helped. Thank you for the training !
Brian BVirtual
Mark was fantastic. Enjoyed his coaching very well. Course was very interesting.
Robert AOttawa
The course was really interactive, Mark did a great job at running the course online during the pandemic. He was always willing to answer questions and provide relevant resources. I like that the focus during class-time was more on effective implementation in the real world rather than learning text-book material.
Agata BVirtual
Mark did a fantastic job of concisely and thoroughly describing the POs.
Dean GToronto
Awesome instructor with a sense of humor. Well read and fun!
Wendy AVancouver
Mark was very knowledgeable; I really appreciated the examples that he shared with the group. Thank you!
Suzanne AVirtual
Great course to get started. Mark is greatly knowledgeable and shares well the information.
Christine AMontreal
This was a very illuminating overview of Scrum roles and best practices, taught by a very engaging instructor.
Douglas GPrivate Client
Awesome instructor, great course.
Kristie KPrivate Client
Very patient. Really liked the group activity where we had to work in Sprints on user stories.
Anita AVirtual
Mark is amazing at asking thought-povoking questions to think on issues at a 2nd degree level. (i.e. reasons behind the challenge)
Connie LToronto
Mark was very personable, easy going an know what he was teaching. This makes the class environment more interactive and fun.
Asif BVirtual
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
Very informative and interesting introduction to the concepts and principles of Agile development and Scrum.
Michael HVancouver
I had the best two days of practical training on Agile. Instructor has logical answers to my questions.
Angie EEdmonton
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
Had little to no knowledge/training of Scrum & Agile and this was a great intro, with a couple of deep(er) dives. This course definitely helped me get introduced to Scrum and the world of Agile. While it's nice that scrum doesn't explicitly tell you how to do something, it definitely requires a significant amount of application in the real world to learn it.
Daneila DToronto
Awesome, really. Energizing course, I learned a lot and feel empowered - Thank you!
Benoit FOttawa
This course is valuable to anyone who would like to be introduced to Scrum. It was a well spended 2 day course and was very helpful. Mark is very knowledgeable and a very good coach.
Ronald HOttawa
Brilliant! Engaging and enlightening while not promising the world.
Oksana KOttawa
This was the first professional class I've taken that gave me a more in depth perspective of the scrum process. Really concise in explanations. Stays on topic as best as possible. Extremely helpful.
Michelle KToronto
Mark leads the class on an explanation of the topics and provides traps to ensure students can learn from practice.
Peter CPrivate Client
Great conversations. Thanks, Mark! My confidence in understanding the role increased!
Orville HEdmonton
Excellent job of teaching about using scrum. Very good job engaging the class and providing a fun place to learn. Full moneys worth.
Eric CToronto
Mark is great - knows the material and can address all questions, prompting us to try and answer them first! Great trainer, I would recommend him to others.
Frances AOttawa
Great in depth knowledge of subject matter.
Joseph COttawa
Really liked the approach by Mark to apply Scrum methodology to this training. Also Mark was available to answer questions and patient.
Damien JOttawa
Mark knows this content, kept us engaged and provided hands-on workshop tasks to understand the conent. Fantastic approach to this course with backlog and Sprints. Stories and answering questions of the group was appreciated.
Matt FPrivate Client
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
This was a good course. Plenty of offline reading and later reference. For a full two day course, I am informed but not exhausted.
Chris GKitchener-Waterloo
Very knowledgeable teacher with tons of examples and real life stories.
Alex BMontreal
Awesome material delivery.
Geetha KToronto
I wanted to take the time to leave this review after seeing how my new Scrum knowledge has impacted my work. Now, I can confidently say that the training not only gave me a deeper understanding of Agile and Scrum but also boosted my confidence, motivation, and drive. I apply my new skills every single day, and they have made a significant difference in how I support my teams. Mark, thank you for contributing to my growth—I’m so glad I took this step. Your training was engaging, insightful, and truly life-changing for anyone passionate about Scrum and Agile. I highly recommend this certification to anyone looking to elevate their skills and make a real impact in their teams!
Anastasia FVirtual
Very engaging instructor and scenarios.
Christine APrivate Client
I find the instructor very knowledgeable and experienced in Scrum. He was very well organized and prepared for the course. He encouraged in class participation and elevated course content with real life examples. Well played! The course, its content and material covered Scrum very well.
Alena CVancouver
This course was a rapid-fire immersion into the world of scrum. As such, it provides a grounding for us to start on the journey to becoming a good scrummaster.
Steve HToronto
Very knowledgeable and interesting. I appreciated that he respected the outline and timeframes.
Caroline DVirtual
Mark was very personable, easy going and knows what he was teaching. This makes the class environment more interactive and fun
Dan DVirtual
Mark made the class enjoyable. I was initially dreading a 3 day course. After the first day I knew that I could live through the course.
Dickie BPrivate Client
Tons of material to get through, Mark did well with the contextual questions from our organization.
Brendan BPrivate Client
Excellent. 5 on the scale of 1 to 5.
Suhas KToronto
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

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.

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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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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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