An agile project has three more iterations before the release.

Encourage the team to self-organize and determine how to best complete their existing work and this spike.

Encourage the team to complete their just existing work since the team velocity indicates they are already struggling to meet the release goal.

Direct the team to defer the spike until the next release and add the action on the backlog for prioritization.

Direct the team to work on the spike immediately given the importance of reporting functionality to complete the iteration.