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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Really appreciated how he addressed our questions and gave feedback. Mark was very knowledgable on the subject matter.
Kyle AOttawa
Mark thanks for sharing your knowledge. I truly enjoyed your course. You have a great teaching ability.
Anaya MOttawa
Mark was a great instructor. He was highly motivated, engaging, and kept us interested for the two days. Highly recommend others to take this course with Mark!
Prashanth MToronto
Instructor was very knowledgeable. Situations we brought forward he was able to help us detemine the source of the issue without telling us. Great coach!
Elsie SEdmonton
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 is Great! I took a CSM course from him 11 years ago, hence I picked this course again 11 years later.
Justin LVirtual
Instructor was very invested in the material. Very knowledgeable and relatable.
Alan MEdmonton
Mark was very engaging and provides an excellent overview of the Scrum methodology.
Stephane LEdmonton
Mark was fantastic. Possibly the best, most prepared instructor I've seen. He was awesome.
Colin MToronto
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
Excellent work, I have a lot of ideas and appreciate the way they were introduced.
John MEdmonton
I cannot say anything but good things about the course, and have been telling many people in my org about it.
Hatem NVirtual
Good instructor. On point. Assertive and describes the problems and approaches well.
Andrei POttawa
After 24+ years of traditional thinking, this was refreshing and new. Can't wait to begin implementing at work. Thanks, Mark!
Kristine NEdmonton
Interesting, engaging, practical exercises.
Olga HMontreal
Very knowledgeable instructor, great info on theory and practice. Lots more info to cover if we had more time.
Jamie GOttawa
Mark was an excellent instructor for this course. His ability to communicate and engage the class to understand and implement the scrum methodology is wonderful and I had a wonderful time during the course.
Pratham DVirtual
Mark is very enthusiastic and responsive, good at eliciting participation, diverse exercises to keep us from getting bored, informative answers. Good focus on cross-functional teams and sharing non-dev where we fit in.
Carly HPrivate Client
Mark did a great job. I appreciated that a) he was coming from a strong development background and b) had an obvious passion about Scrum and the benefits it could bring to development.
Adam MVirtual
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
You have a deep understanding of the Scrum methodology. You are good listener and you are able to adapt to your audience. I am really satisfied and will recommend you.
Eric LMontreal
Mark was engaging, knowledgeable, well-read and provided great examples.
Warren CVancouver
Mark was recommended to me from a colleague and I honestly was delighted of how much I learned from the course. I have been as a project manager for a number of years, and I really felt that I was able to understand how to apply this to my current work and also even how to work within my working style.
Joyce KVirtual
Mark was excellent - one of the best instructors I have had. Well prepared, knowledgable, and he obviously cares.
David OEdmonton
Despite these unprecedented times, this course was great! Using tools like mural made this course engaging, fun and inspiring while being from home. Mark was up for answering all questions and challenging us, or at the very least pointing us in the right direction!
Jessica LVirtual
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 was very knowledgeable and walked us through Scrum using the actual technique. Very good technique.
Kevin COttawa
The instructor was very enthusiastic and knowledgeable on Agile. His teaching methods were very clever and humble, I feel that all the course attendees found him experienced and clever.
Jamin IToronto
It was an excellent seminar. It gave us hands-on exercises. I can see lots of challenges ahead as I try to implement changes to our scrum team. Should be fun and interesting journey!
Ann Margaret GMontreal
Great course Mark! I really enjoyed learning more about the framwork and listening to others point of view.
Sarah MToronto
Mark is a lively and engaging instructor. Information was presented effectively and at a reasonable pace.
Joel DOttawa
Mark is an awesome instructor and he is very knowledgeable.
Samina CVirtual
Well versed in knowledge and provided great "philosophical" thinking towards solutions to problems at work. Fun and approachable. Encourages solution formulation yourself.
Kang CKitchener-Waterloo
Very knowledgeable and experienced, thanks!
Kendall OVancouver
Mark was knowledgable and provided us with a good base to start with.
Maria Noah MPrivate Client
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
This course was exactly what I was looking for! Mark was a very knowledgeable and engaging instructor. I appreciated the hands-on exercises that allowed me to put the methodology into practice with my course mates and learn from the experience. The course material is also top notch. I feel ready to take the exam and put what I've learnt into practice in my workplace.
Anu PVirtual
The course was well led, I found it very useful. Allowing the conversations to go on was nice as a lot of the issues were issues I was experiencing as well. I found Mark to be pleasant and extremely knowledgeable.
Jeff FVirtual
Very informative course on the use of Scrum for software development. It covers all the areas of scrum, including all the key players and demonstrates how the roles, responsibilities and process work together to create effective, self organizing teams.
Amera PEdmonton
It has been a long time where 5 days of work didn't feel like 5 days. The course was so fun, I really enjoyed coming into work.
Cong LVancouver
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 was an extremely engaging and informative instructor. I enjoyed all of the aspects of the course/topics covered. I look forward to continuing my Agile education because of this course.
Cailey RToronto
Knows his material very well. Is pleasant. Proper course material was provided.
Jean PMontreal
Very effective and experienced instructor. Well organized.
Sam MOttawa
Very informative. Well presented. Good tempo.
Robert MOttawa
Very smart and knowledgeable about not only Scrum but also Agile practices. Didn't mince words and instilled confidence in us that we could make his advice work for us.
Simon LOttawa
Mark is a great teacher and is very good at engaging people. Really gets the spark going!
Julien LMontreal
Mark Levison lives and embodies the SCRUM in his courses. Never before have I felt so empowered to self-organize in a classroom setting.
Zoltan MOttawa
Mark was an excellent instructor. He was patient with us and mindful of the different types of humans in the class. Even though we got behind and had to skip the last exercise I didn't feel like I was missing anything. I think the discussions were of more value than the final sprint (so good choice). I really appreciate that he is giving us all kinds of materials and pointing us to books and articles to help us. I feel very supported. Mark did a great job of getting everyone involved and keeping people engaged. Group activities were well placed. I will be sure to recommend this course.
Karen PVirtual
Fantastic overview of Scrum and the need to create High Performing Teams.
Greg LEdmonton

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.

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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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