Love the slides, wish I could’ve been there. Any other good sources online? Thanks!

I would like to point out that Burndown chart is not the right artifact for this problem.

The planned velocity was reflecting the story points the team chose to finish. In that case, that was a story point with relatively small value (compare to what the team should be capable of).

If that is less than what the team is capable of, then it is very likely that the actual velocity won’t leave too far away from the planned velocity.

The result is having a very nice Burndown Chart but the customer gets little value by the end of the iteration.

I think the better answer for this question is:

1) Daily Standup meeting. PO are welcome to attend. It is also a good way to establish trust and see that the team is fully committed to the work, whether they have difficulties or not.

2) Asking questions, it is true that Scrum Master is not the person to manage nor dictate what the team should do. Scrum Master can ask questions to the team on their decisions. This is not a challenge nor showing authority, but to understand rationale behind the decisions made by the team. This could also reveal if impediments exist, and it is Scrum Master’s responsibility to remove impediments to the team. So identifying potential impediments is also important for Scrum Masters, and that’s why a sensible Scrum Master should ask questions to the team when he/she smells something not quite right.

There are a few things I could recall from the presentation that I think should be added.

1) Use Case vs User Stories

They are indeed different from at least two perspectives:

* Scope and completeness, user story usually covers the main success scenario, while a use case covers the main success scenario plus acceptance tests.

* Purpose and longevity, story cards are usually discarded after an iteration, while use case is good as a permanent artifacts for documentation.

References:

http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/article/27-advantages-of-user-stories-for-requirements

http://www.agilemodeling.com/practices.htm#ApplyTheRightArtifacts

http://www.infoq.com/cn/news/2008/08/use-case-or-user-story

Some photos from the talk are at the link below:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmlowe/sets/72157606785371517/