A developer on the 311-multilingual intake team asks, "Should we split this story?" and waits for the coach to prescribe the cut. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach do?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Handing someone a pre-cut sandwich is lunch, not cooking class. When the 311 team asks how to split, the coach grows their judgment with a question instead of drawing the answer. Next time they will cut the story without waiting for a hero.
Full Explanation
Powerful questions help teams reason; prescribing cuts for them blocks self-management. When a developer on the 311-multilingual intake team asks whether to split a story and waits for the coach to draw the answer, the Scrum Master/Team Coach should ask questions that surface criteria—value for non-English callers, risk, testability, and resident journey—so the team owns the split instead of inheriting a coach diagram.
Drawing the split immediately so the team does not think fails by concept: it creates dependency on the coach and teaches that thinking is optional under civic deadline pressure. Assigning the split as Product Owner-only homework fails by concept by excluding the people who must build and test multilingual intake. Escalating every split to the Release Train Engineer fails by concept because train-level planning should not micro-split team stories that the delivering team understands best.
Exam caveat: SASM coaching skills emphasize powerful questions and facilitating team ownership; answering for the team is a common anti-pattern. Guidance and examples are fine—final reasoning should remain with the 311 intake team and Product Owner collaborating in refinement.
Operational check: respond with open questions about split criteria, facilitate a short team discussion, let them choose the cut on the board, resist redrawing it unless safety or compliance risk demands intervention, and confirm the next similar question is answered by the team with less coach prescription.