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 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
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 was great. Excellent sense of humor, great ability to adapt, wealth of business and sugject matter knowledge.
Jesse BPrivate Client
AMAZING! Funny, interesting, engaging course!
Bassem HMontreal
Fantastic. Very engaging and helpful blend of both Scrum and general business advice.
Dace DOttawa
Instructor was amazing, easy to listen to and follow. Did not read from book and provided concrete examples.
Tricia AOttawa
Mark was good - foundatian of knowledge and his experiences made for good practical examples.
Mike AMontreal
I was impressed. The most valuable thing was not the principles (already knew most intellectually) but the instructor's zen master answers to challnges/questions. This aided in more intutive knowledge.
David AEdmonton
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 has been a great facilitator, instructor, and extremely knowledgeable on teaching Scrum. Great analogies and references cited.
Wilfred MPrivate Client
Instructor is engaging; good change of state during delivery. I like the more concrete demonstration of SCRUM by teaching the course in the SCRUM style.
Damon HEdmonton
Best training I've taken in a long time.
Susan DPrivate Client
Thank you very much. I learned a great deal and have already been seeing opportunities to apply the infrastructure learned.
Hugh HOttawa
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
This course was great at examining how our team currently uses elements of scrum and refreshing that knowledge in order to improve our scrum practices.
Aaron SVirtual
Mark is a very entertaining instructor. I feel I learned a great deal more than I could through reading/self study.
Michael HToronto
Great experience and great delivery. Really enjoyable course!
Darren HOttawa
Mark's teaching methods make the course fly and help the information stick. He gives a clear understanding of the theory of agile/scrum and real world application tips so students can apply scrum immediately and successfully.
Anne MOttawa
Mark was a great instructor, really made the content easily understandable and great at answering questions.
Melanie MVirtual
The course is great and Mark is amazing. I really impressed with his high level of knoweledge, his personal skills. I enjoyed the level how he conducted the training. The level structured and time-planned sessions. I enjoyed the way how and what Mark answered unpredictable questions. He is great facilitator. Thanks a lot for opportunity to expand my knoweledge.
Anna MVirtual
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
It is very well organized and timed. The teacher has a really deep, hands-on knowledge about the subject.
Alberto MPrivate Client
Mark is excellent. He instructs and communicates in simple and visual ways that are memorable. He is adaptable, and does a great job balancing needs of individuals and the group.
Ryan MToronto
The course was fun, engaging, and highly responsive to participants. The complete lack of Powerpoint and bulleted lists was amazingly refreshing. Using a Sprint board to run the course was ingenious.
Robin GToronto
Crisp and concise in delivery. Captivating and inspiring. Obviously very knowledgeable and experienced.
Jason LToronto
Energetic, clear, helpful, inspiring, a great teacher.
Nadil POttawa
Mark is a very clear and engaging instructor. He is able to use examples and exercises to ground our learning.
Ayesha KOttawa
Mark is an excellent trainer with examples and practices. Very organized and the best thing is his response to our questions with example, in addition, the amount of references that might help up improve as a scrum master.
Dona AMontreal
Great facilitation techniques often used as a regular classroom teacher (i.e. rephrasing, simplificaion, observing, hinting, investigative learning).
Mike PMontreal
This is my second course with Mark and it was fantastic! Mark is incredibly knowledgeable and engaging. Taking the course virtually was very smooth. I was still able to connect with some great new people while learning a ton and having fun.
Robin DVirtual
Mark was a good speaker and resourceful instructor. Exercises were practical and useful.
Ronald MPrivate Client
Pragmatic, no nonsense & applied = very good!
Francois-Pierre MMontreal
Great instructor, learned a lot and enjoyed.
David POttawa
Mark was very engaging, and his training session helped to increase my knowledge of Agile and Scrum.
Tiffany MToronto
I felt that Mark is an incredible teacher. He's extemely knowledgeable on the subject and shares his experience with the entire class. Very structured.
Anthony PToronto
Time master- thank you for pushing us through topics. Honestly - stated that you can provide examples, up to us to decide.
Tracey OToronto
I enjoyed having Mark as an instructor, he is knowledgeable on the topic, provided easy to follow examples, and has a good sense of humour. I liked how he took notes on questions people had, provided a brief answer and then provided links after the workshop so that we could follow up on the topics that interest us. The 10 min sanity breaks that he gave every hour were great as it allowed my brain to relax and then come back and focus. I really enjoyed the course, I learned lots over the 2 day workshop. I feel like 2 days might be a bit short for the course as I would have enjoyed another day of the course to learn more and refine my skills. I would recommend this course to anyone new to the scrum master role or interested in learning about scrum as it gives you a great base that you can expand.
Christopher MVirtual
Excellent. Well worth money and time.
David MOttawa
Mark was fantastic. Possibly the best, most prepared instructor I've seen. He was awesome.
Colin MToronto
As always, Mark is both extremely knowledgable and wildy entertaining for all things scrum.
Jennifer MOttawa
Mark is a great instructor, using real life examples makes easy to understand better what the scrum methodology is and how to apply it to our roles.
Robin MVirtual
Mark did an excellent job. I appreciated the hands-on nature of the training wherein we actually tried to do Scrum. He was patient handling all our questions and issues, and managed to keep us engaged despite being on Zoom.
Dan MVirtual
Mark was such a great and fun instructor! He is very knowledgeable and good at explaining Scrum in a way that can be understood by all. I would definitely recommend this course with Mark to my colleagues and team!
Audrey MVirtual
This course helped me get a significant understanding of what Scrum is, how it can be applied in my real life work environment and what benefits could I have from it. The instructor was passionate about the subject, which helped me stay focus and interested.
Vincent MVirtual
Mark is super knowledgable on the topic and presents it in a fun and educational atmosphere. Really enjoyed the team work and Mark's perspective on a lot of the information.
Shelly MToronto
Very Experienced, Shared Experiences, Class Participation was done very well.
Gary FPrivate Client
Very knowledgeable instructor about scrum and software development in general.
Elizabeth GOttawa
Very well done. Good introduction of the concepts, good use of technology, good practical incorporation of the methods being taught into the course itself, 10/10
Adam GVirtual
Passionate and enthusiastic instructor, excellent course and materials.
Don CVancouver
Concepts I learned in this course are more sticky because they were demonstrated through exercise and not just explained.
Joseph MOttawa

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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About this course

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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Relatable Scenarios

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.

Jargon-Free Learning

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.

Ongoing Support

Our active Scrum community forum is a safe place to ask questions. Long after you earn the Certified Scrum Master certification, you will have access to the forum, course materials, and additional valuable resources.