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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Great course, awesome instructor!
Paul-Andre PPrivate Client
Mark is an awesome instructor and he is very knowledgeable.
Samina CVirtual
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
Mark provides clarity into the mystical world of Agile and Scrum with practical examples and Jedi wisdom. Add some psychosocial games into the batch and your in for an adventure. Training will test not just your ability to obtain facts, but leave you pondering the cavernous opportunities for the scum master to be an agent of organizational change.
Petrus BVirtual
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
Mark is amazing. He is a knowledgeable instructor about scrum and I would like to attend another course with him. He taught me the basic and theories of scrum. Now i will need to integrate it with the work place. I enjoyed this course as it provided me with the concept of scrum to bring forward to my team at work.
Justin CVirtual
Mark rocks! His extensive real world experience combined with his depth of knowledge of Scrum processes and tools made for a superior learning opportunity with lots of fun along the way. Highly recommend!
Steven CPrivate Client
Mark is a lively and engaging instructor. Information was presented effectively and at a reasonable pace.
Joel DOttawa
Mark was incredibly knowledge and experienced and it's very apparent. I learned more than I could have expected. I greatly appreciate all the additional reading materials. I would have never been able to collect such a library on my own and I have a fascination for good leadership and developing high performing teams.
Anly HOttawa
Mark was very energetic and enthusiastic instructor. You could definitely feel his passion for Agile and Engineering as a whole.
William IPrivate Client
Overall very well structured course. It helped me see the benefits of Scrum and learned how to apply it.
Nazir EOttawa
Excellent course, gained a lot of context on SCRUM best practices beyond the context of how [Private Client] currently operates.
Hamza EPrivate Client
Very passionate and organized, kept material interesting.
Sjoerd FEdmonton
Honest and open, encouraged us to think on our own. Really highlighted this is not a defined process, we need to figure out what works best for our teams,
Alana GPrivate Client
Mark was extremely knowledgeable, effective teacher, responded well to students and has an excellent sense of humour.
Kely BVancouver
Mark is the real s**t. He's lived through the pain points and knows where the bodies are buried.
Christian FMontreal
Calm, knowledgeable, and open to questions. Great.
Brandon GVirtual
Course was great and enjoyable. Lots of make you think kind of questions.
Andrew FOttawa
Mark did an awesome job. He is very knowledgable, helpful, and patient. I will recommend this course for sure.
Jamal EToronto
Instructor very excellent and the course is very good to introduce perople to the Agile Methodology.
Sonia JPrivate Client
Fantastic overview of Scrum and the need to create High Performing Teams.
Greg LEdmonton
Overall excellent instruction to Agile, practical exercises worked well, foundation to applications of principles and desire to learn more established.
Stuart BVancouver
Mark is an articulate speaker that is easy to listen to and he brings real-life situations to the course which makes it interesting. Answers questions well and takes the time to make sure he gets his point across.
Wayne BVirtual
Excellent! A refreshing approach! I loved the style of delivering the material and the many discussions and short exercises.
Mark APrivate Client
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
Being engaged in activities with a group gave valuable insight into the problems we might face in our organizations. This course was great! I was never bored and enjoyed working with others. The course instructor was approachable, clear, and great at proving points.
David BMontreal
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
Great, eloquent, knowledgeable.
Mladen JToronto
Great energy. Made the day pass with a mix of humour and data.
Matthew COttawa
He is funny. And smart. And a good storyteller. All together = great combo.
Melanie HEdmonton
Very good. Great at illustrating his point.
Manny BOttawa
Good course. Good instructor. No boring moments.
Ashishkumar PMontreal
Awesome, good humour and very knowledgeable about side elements and how they come into play.
Daniel LOttawa
Course was great. Mark was terrific! Kept us involved and thinking.
Anne DPrivate Client
Great! Fun! And I learned something too! Seriously, one of the best training sessions for my personal growth.
Pierre VMontreal
Mark is great and explained dry terms with examples.
Xueyan BPrivate Client
Lots of information. Agenda was covered in full. Role play very effective. If you can apply the Scrum, it is a very good course to attend.
Mitch RToronto
Very Charming, approachable, easy to ask questions to.
Carly SToronto
The instructor is very knowledgeable in the subject and kept us motivated and alert during the course. The course itself covers lots of material which is necessary for someone who wants to become a successful scrum master.
Elena RVirtual
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
Mark is very knowledgable. He provided interesting background on errors/mistakes committed by Scrum teams.
Prabh SToronto
As a self-employed business owner with a small team, this course was helpful in understanding how to improve my company's value to clients.
Murtada SEdmonton
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
The course and exercise were well designed to add value compared to reading about Scrum. Mark is an effective presenter, keeping things interesting and (often) entertaining.
Gordon EPrivate Client
Training style great. Open to discussions and various viewpoints. Helpful. Wants to make sure we all understand. Takes time to discuss further if required. Manages the agenda/time with group consensus/agreement.
Meredith SToronto
A lot to learn and a lot to cover for Scrum. Mark was living the art of scrum and set a role model of time box.
Dang DVancouver
Excellent. 5 on the scale of 1 to 5.
Suhas KToronto
He is knowledgeable and patient about the subject.
Nabil SEdmonton
Mark did a great job sparking conversation, without reading slide after slide. Very happy with this course.
Lee GPrivate Client
Great course! Interesting and fun. Not a moment of dullness.
Roma SOttawa

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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