The snow-route team sits idle in the Innovation and Planning iteration because nobody facilitated innovation or learning. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach coach?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Idle snow-route IP is a plow garage with the lights on and no work order. IP is not a vacation and not a junk drawer of other teams' leftovers. Put innovation, learning, and I&A prep on a real IP backlog.
Full Explanation
IP needs a purposeful backlog of innovation, education, and Inspect and Adapt prep—not a vacation default. A snow-route team sitting idle because nobody facilitated learning wastes the iteration’s intent. The Scrum Master / Team Coach coaches a shared IP purpose so winter-operations improvements and skills advance. Idle utilization theater or random tasks are not the alternative to vacation; purposeful IP is.
Treating IP as unpaid time off abandons ART improvement. Assigning leftover stories from other teams to keep people “utilized” recreates delivery overflow. Letting people choose ad-hoc tasks without shared purpose fragments learning.
Exam caveat: IP is neither holiday nor mini-delivery; facilitate its purposes. Operational check: before snow-route IP starts, publish a short IP backlog with innovation, learning, and I&A prep items.
In municipal ARTs, residents experience these coaching choices as faster or slower public services—licensing lines, housing decisions, water bills, snow routes, and emergency response—so keep events and buffers tied to inspect-and-adapt outcomes. Record the decision, the owner, and the next inspection date so the team can verify civic impact. Confirm the next demo or metrics review will show whether the change helped residents.