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 was excellent - one of the best instructors I have had. Well prepared, knowledgable, and he obviously cares.
David OEdmonton
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
Very good and useful information. I like the format (no boring Powerpoint) and doing the meeting as a sprint was great.
Fred BPrivate Client
Mark explained things well. He's nice. There are valuable discussions during the course, that I saw others problems and experiences.
Hoo LKitchener-Waterloo
Course: great content! Instructor: excellent and very knowledgeable on the subject.
Nadeem FEdmonton
The course was very helpful by reinforcing my commitment to scrum team responsibilty and ownership. Mark was an excellent instructor, knowledgeable, professional, and in control.
Adrian GPrivate Client
Great instructor, very satisfied, will recomment! I brought my whole team with me, happy I did.
Joshua COttawa
Great seminar, very helpful and Mark showed us in real time examples the application of Scrum.
Pierre EMontreal
Mark was able to translate his obvious expertise and experience in lay terms, putting the team at ease through humour, anecdotes and a good level of engagement.
Brendan GVirtual
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
Mark is a great instructor, very clear and informative. Great course. High recommendable.
Simon BVancouver
Excellent communicator, good at focusing on the important topics.
Mick BPrivate Client
Great course and great instructor! Will definitely recommend to friends!
Hisham EOttawa
Great session overall. Appreciate your openness and honesty.
Lisa FToronto
I participated in the Certified Scrum Master course instructed by Mark Levison. Mark is a very well educated in the Agile Scrum methodology and presented the course material in a very entertaining way during the 2-day course. I learned a lot of things I had not previously known even though I had been practicing scrum for the past 5 years. I would highly recommend that every organization send their scrum focal’s to this training – it will help them advance their organization in implementing, and delivering scrum based projects, thus help their business be more successful.
Graham FVirtual
Great course. Information overload but not in a bad way. I liked that we discussed specific corporate problems people were having. Helped build context in how others are using Agile/Scrum. Maybe misusing, too.
Tyler BVancouver
Awesome instructor and course! Will recommend!
Mikael GOttawa
Insanely terrific. I have been bored silly at some Agile training classes. This was 100% interesting… okay, 98%. Very clear, Exceptional memory! I get it now - the value of a *real* pro scrum master.
Simon CVancouver
The course was structured in a way that allowed us to cover a lot of information in a manner that kept things interesting and allowed space to explore topics where the group was more interested.
Gino FOttawa
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
Great course. Covers the essentials and deals with a lot of potential situations and ways to handle them. Mark had great room presence and was a great communicator.
Michael VEdmonton
Very informative. Well presented. Good tempo.
Robert MOttawa
Great course! Very engaging and knowlegeable instructor.
Kolin BOttawa
Mark is a great teacher and is very good at engaging people. Really gets the spark going!
Julien LMontreal
Hands on experience in the subject helps to communicate most of the inportant message throughout the course.
Wael FToronto
Time master- thank you for pushing us through topics. Honestly - stated that you can provide examples, up to us to decide.
Tracey OToronto
I feel like the structure of the course is good in how it is treated as a backlog with all the participants prioritizing topics.
Aaron GOttawa
Using Scrum to teach Scrum. Perfect.
Andrew COttawa
I enjoyed taking this course with Mark. Examples given in class were relatable to the majority of the group. He was engaging, leaving nobody left out (ensuring everybody participated).
Jennifer MPrivate Client
Mark did an awesome job. He is very knowledgable, helpful, and patient. I will recommend this course for sure.
Jamal EToronto
Excellent instructor provided engaging activites to help roleplay learning and provoke meaningful discussions.
Alice PEdmonton
I really enjoyed the course. Mark really understands the topic and is willing to go into great depth about items the students wished. Very enjoyable.
Mark MKitchener-Waterloo
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
Mark is very knowledgeable and really challenges the class to engage, speak, think about the core concepts, even when it’s messy/unclear in “real world” situations. I talked to a couple of my colleagues afterward and even the ones who were having difficulty with the usefulness of Scrum in their professional lives really enjoyed the course and the instructor, myself included.
Louis BVirtual
Very well organized; clear instructions; experienced instructor; useful prep work; dynamic and encouraged individuals participation; perfect breaks; excellent material.
Ana PVirtual
Very good course, well balanced and very interactive.
Alexandre GMontreal
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
I thought the instructor and course was excelelnt and very enlightening.
Aengus MEdmonton
Mark harnessed the power of our diverse perspectives/skills/experience to create agile team enacting scrum as we applied our learning. This applied learning led us to knowledge sharing, trust, and mastery.
Danica MOttawa
Mark is a very engaging instructor.
Chris PEdmonton
Exceptional presentation delivery that is clear, concise, and though-provoking, involving tremendous audience participation.
Norman EOttawa
Mark did a great job and was impressed how well it worked virtually and not in person!
Jennifer PVirtual
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 course. Recommend for people that have done some Scrum and read all the readings. Mark is a great instructor. Among best I've had.
David MEdmonton
Mark was very good. I appreciated that he was able to provide good examples and explain concepts clearly.
Valerie EVancouver
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
Instructor was very clear.
May Lynn LEdmonton
Brilliant instructor for a heavy and varied course. Answers questions almost flawlessly and really understands what people need in order to learn effectively.
Analee CPrivate Client
Mark was a great instructor. He made things really fun and engaging. It wasn't just a boring lecture to sit through for two days. It kept us engaged and we learned a lot. Thanks Mark!
Geeta BVirtual
Great Class! Learning in a dynamic and fun way with interesting and useful context and examples.
Suzelle FMontreal

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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