As a coach and mentor, I often observe meetings and events so I can debrief with the person(s) I am coaching afterward and provide them with a different perspective. I was involved in observing a planning session in which a stakeholder stated, “Combine these two items, they are similar, and only count it as one toward our capacity.” What?   We also have a visit from Jon M Quigley and his Alpha and Omega of Product Development column. Jon and I talk about including technical people in sales and estimates.   New  Book! Jeremy Willets and I have written  which will be released on January 9th. Regardless of whether you’re creating, enhancing, or maintaining software products, work intake is a challenge you deal with constantly. Doing the right work at the right time can make or break your project, and there are surprisingly few resources to show you how to manage this process effectively. You need to know what your team is executing, what work is next, and the skill sets required to do the work. focuses on the full pipeline that work follows as it enters and exits your organization, including the different types of work that enter at different levels and times. It is a must-read for agile coaches, Scrum Masters, product owners, project and portfolio managers, team members, and anyone who touches the software development process. Mastering work intake involves recognizing that it’s easy to say “ yes” and much harder to say “ no.” Order or preorder your copy from JRoss: Amazon (US): For physical copies outside of the US and Canada: UK and EU:   For international orders outside of Europe: (or the Amazon store for your country) Note: The Publisher indicates that it takes a while for the physical copies to get to the distributors outside of the USA and Canada. Re-read Saturday News Chapter Four of , titled Process Behaviour Charts is a trojan horse. This chapter is substantially more than a rehash of Process Behaviour Charts. The chapter corrected a misconception I have had for at least twenty years which we will get to in Part 2 of our re-read of chapter 4 (we are taking two weeks on this chapter to set up chapters 5 and 6). Thanks, Mr. Vacanti.  Buy a copy and get reading – .   Week 1: – Week 2: – Week 3:   –   Next SPaMCAST  SPaMCAST 790 will feature our interview with Stefan Wolpers. Stefan and I talked about the Scrum Master role in the 21st Century.