Leadership ranks two teams on the same ART solely by story points after the last PI. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach respond?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Story points are a team's private ruler, not a citywide race. Comparing two ART teams by points is like ranking firehouses by how many sticky notes they wrote. Outcomes and local flow beat the league table.
Full Explanation
When leadership ranks two teams on the same ART solely by story points after the last PI, the Scrum Master / Team Coach should refuse the cross-team point comparison and steer toward local, outcome-based measures. Points are team-relative estimates, not a currency for civic league tables, and different backlogs have different sizing cultures. Publishing a league table so the lower-point team feels the comparison weaponizes incomparable numbers and damages collaboration across the ART. Averaging the two teams' points into one ART velocity invents a false precision that hides both teams' realities. Asking the RTE to normalize points into a train-wide score formalizes the same category error at train level and invites systemic inflation. Exam caveat: SASM rejects cross-team velocity comparisons as performance ranking; outcome and flow measures local to each team's municipal work are the better coaching target. Operational check: explain why points are not comparable across teams, propose outcome measures appropriate to each team's civic service, remove or refuse the league table, and review the replacement measures with leadership after one PI. Watch for "normalized points" returning under a new name and coach directors to ask for resident outcomes instead.