Predictability on the snow-route team collapsed after a mandate to start every item labeled "priority." How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach interpret the drop?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
When every "priority" item starts at once, predictability does not die of laziness—it dies of traffic. The snow-route mandate is a system policy, not a character flaw. Look at WIP before you look for villains.
Full Explanation
When predictability on a snow-route team collapses after a mandate to start every item labeled "priority," the Scrum Master / Team Coach should trace the drop to the start-everything policy and WIP, not to "lazy people." Starting everything destroys focus, inflates work in process, and makes forecasts meaningless while plows, routing, and desk work thrash under false urgency. Blaming lazy people and adding individual utilization targets misdiagnoses a systems policy as a character flaw and usually worsens multitasking. Ignoring the mandate and treating the drop as a failed personal performance review still personalizes a flow problem. Asking the Release Train Engineer to rebaseline PI objectives without looking at the policy resets the scoreboard while leaving the thrashing rule intact. Exam caveat: SASM links predictability to WIP and policy design; personality blame and rebaselines without policy inspection are common distractors on advanced team-coach items. Operational check: make WIP and the start-everything mandate visible on the snow-route board, facilitate a stop-starting experiment with true priorities, measure predictability and cycle time after the change, and brief leadership that the policy—not people—drove the collapse. Keep utilization targets from being sold as the "fix" for a WIP disease during winter surge planning.