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'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
Awesome, highly recommended!
Simran WVancouver
Mark was great !! Very thorough - his passion for what he does came through. I appreciated his organization and engagement with the team. He was awesome.
Rene EVirtual
Course was great. Mark was terrific! Kept us involved and thinking.
Anne DPrivate Client
Great course! Very down to earth and humourous instructor. Would recommend to others!
Steve BKitchener-Waterloo
Excellent instruction with deep knowledge of scrum. All questions or clarfications were answered. Provided information I can take back to my team.
Emilia KOttawa
I had the best two days of practical training on Agile. Instructor has logical answers to my questions.
Angie EEdmonton
The variation of types of exercises kept things interesting, much better than answer questions.
Michael GOttawa
Loved this course! Mark is very thorough and attentive as a teacher. He leveraged Mural in such interactive ways, which allowed him to understand the students well and shape the class accordingly. He is like the Jedi master of scrum and insanely advanced methods of leaderless collaboration and accomplishment. He's also the king of super nerdy jokes, which made the class fun and brought out the super nerd in everyone.
Lia GVirtual
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Mark. I learned a lot and appreciate his teaching style.
Kendall APrivate Client
Overall awesome. I am really inspired & revigorated to do this with my team.
Mikaela GVancouver
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 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
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 did a great job of purposefully making us all feel included and engaged with his class. He added great clarity to the budding scrum process that has taken over in my workplace. I have seen many versions and perspectives on scrum values that deviate and distort how scrum would work, but I am now confident I can facilitate with my projects and team, using a much clearer scrum.
Charlene FVirtual
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
Second course with Mark went great. I have to figure out how to afford more?
David HMontreal
Great course, a lot of valuable information. Experienced instructor, great ability to adapt to group and real work situtations.
Karen LPrivate Client
Great course! I will recommend this to others.
Darryl EVancouver
Really dynamic! Use scrum tools to control the flow of the course which is a good example.
Marc LMontreal
Excellent communicator, good at focusing on the important topics.
Mick BPrivate Client
Mark and the course were able to give me a lot of different perspectives on how scrum can be applied. Mark is very knowledgable and has tech background [which] helped myself as we knew the sector better.
Nicholas LOttawa
Anyone looking to do this course...do it with Mark! His passion for all things “Scrum and Agile” shines through and excites his students. He’s a “scrum” realist with a fantastic sense of humour! The material is relevant today and Mark gives us a glimpse of what we can expect 5 years from now. The post class support is fantastic and shows how passionate and knowledgeable Mark is about “learning!” A true educator!
Roberta PVirtual
Lively, hands on, enlightening. Would recommend.
Allen NEdmonton
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
Mark delivered what I think is one of the best adult learning, in a corporate training environment, I’ve experienced. And it was remote! It was engaging, entertaining and very useful. I was also very fortunate to have a great team which significantly enriched my experience.
Noah CVirtual
Excellent instructor. Left lots of room for us to think by ourselves. Great!
Kathleen LVancouver
Mark, you are awesome! I enjoyed your style of teaching/coaching. You focused on our needs and priorities ensuring a "happy customer." You are also respectful towards everyone's opinion which makes it engaging conversation.
Zeeshan BOttawa
Mark is a great instructor, very clear and informative. Great course. High recommendable.
Simon BVancouver
You'll spend two great days with amazing people around and learn a lot while laughing. Take this course!
Stephane LMontreal
Great job, easy to understand and fun.
Matt CKitchener-Waterloo
Passionate and enthusiastic instructor, excellent course and materials.
Don CVancouver
Excellent course, gained a lot of context on SCRUM best practices beyond the context of how [Private Client] currently operates.
Hamza EPrivate Client
Mark is a wonderful, energetic instructer who helps you to evaluate how you are working in your own environment. Then he helps you to figure out how to improve it.
Shelley COttawa
Mark was very good. I appreciated that he was able to provide good examples and explain concepts clearly.
Valerie EVancouver
Mark has been a great facilitator, instructor, and extremely knowledgeable on teaching Scrum. Great analogies and references cited.
Wilfred MPrivate Client
Mark was an excellent instructor, with a sense of humour that helped keep my focus (which is particularly challenging with the course being online over 3 days). Being able to run through simulated sprints to help reinforce the material was very helpful.
Micheal CVirtual
Mark is totally wonderfully weird and knowledgeable.
Sarah MOttawa
Very engaging, interactive and lively CSPO virtual workshop. Mark is an excellent instructor and provided a lot of real world examples to help with understanding. Thank you for coaching. I will definitely recommend this course.
Cindy LVirtual
Mark, you master it! Many thanks for making this content easy to understand.
Bertrand LVirtual
The content of the course covered most of things I was looking for. Mark is a knowledgeable instructor and was able to answer all of the queries the class had.
Ramandeep MEdmonton
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
A very rewarding learning experience. Timeboxed for two days, that really provides business value for future scrum masters /Agile practioners.
Delia DMontreal
Mark is very good. Has a lot of working experiences and real life stories.
Wilson MEdmonton
Mark is very entertaining and knowledgable, the combination of which made for a great two days of training, well done!
Daniel JKitchener-Waterloo
Mark was awesome. Kept the session engaged.
Jyoti KVirtual
Knowledgeable instructor. Engaging and well planned course.
Dan RVirtual
Mark was a very thoughtful and direct instructor.
Luke GVirtual
Mark was very personable, easy going an know what he was teaching. This makes the class environment more interactive and fun.
Asif BVirtual
Great course - certainly lived up to its reputation.
Ryann MKitchener-Waterloo

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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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.

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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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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.