The Role Of the Scrum Master
The Scrum Master facilitates the meeting, arranging where it should happen and supplying any tools required (e.g. estimation cards). He also explains the techniques to be used, such as planning poker. He is always the timekeeper, and will help to move things forward when the team starts getting bogged down in detail.
Finishing off
The aim of estimating points is to provide a baseline for selecting the stories to be included in the next sprint. The total number of story points chosen is a value known as the velocity, that is the speed with which the team works for a sprint. For the first few sprints, this number will be quite variable, while the team is getting to grips with the project. As the sprints progress, the team will stabilize their velocity (although ideally it should improve for each sprint). This makes it easy to estimate how many stories to include in the Sprint Backlog – the total number of user story points should not exceed the velocity achieved to date.
Although this may seem an alien way of project estimation to a traditional project manager, it can be very accurate. It also has a advantage over traditional projects because the whole team was involved and have an intrinsic understanding of the work to be done and its complexity, even if they do not understand the content of the user stories.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: