The Product Owner on the birth-certificate e-file team asks the coach to declare this iteration's goal so planning can finish faster. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach respond?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Declaring the destination from the coach's seat is a bus tour, not a team that chose the route. Birth-certificate work needs a goal the Product Owner and team can both defend. Questions pull that goal out of the room instead of announcing it from the hallway.
Full Explanation
Iteration goals should emerge from Product Owner and team collaboration, not coach decree. When the birth-certificate e-file Product Owner asks the coach to declare the goal so planning can finish faster, minutes are saved by killing ownership of a sensitive civic records increment. The Scrum Master/Team Coach should use questions that pull a shared goal from the Product Owner and team together.
Announcing last PI’s unused objective as this iteration’s goal fails by concept: stale goals ignore current birth-certificate priorities and teach that goals are filler. Writing the goal privately and emailing it after planning fails by concept by avoiding the alignment conversation the ceremony exists to create. Asking the Release Train Engineer to publish a train-level goal that replaces the team iteration goal fails by concept: ART goals complement—they do not erase—team goals.
Exam caveat: SAFe planning includes team-level goals owned by the team with Product Owner input; coaches facilitate, they do not author goals merely to save calendar time. Fast planning that skips shared understanding typically creates slower delivery later on public e-file work.
Operational check: facilitate a short goal-crafting dialogue with Product Owner and team using open questions, write the agreed iteration goal visibly, refuse to unilaterally declare it, and review attainment of that goal at Iteration Review.