Acknowledgments

There are several people whose prodding distinctly helped me write this book. Let me start by acknowledging my editor, Karen Gettman, who was willing to consider a first-time author with a vision and proposal. Ivar Jacobson and Cem Kaner have separately been important mentors, who have encouraged me to write for many years.

Next is Rick LaPlante, who is still my boss at my day job. Rick took a bet on me when he hired me as group product planner for Visual Studio Team System, and he has been a completely supportive manager. Beyond Rick are a couple hundred colleagues who have made VSTS the product that it is. Every contact with them has been and continues to be an intellectual charge.

As you will see, I rely very heavily on the work of Granville (“Randy”) Miller and David J. Anderson, who created MSF for Agile Software Development and MSF for CMMI Process Improvement. We had endless debates and discoveries in creating the instances of MSF v4, and that learning has shaped what you read here in a major way.

Juan J. Perez, my coauthor, and Kim Tapia St. Amant of Personify Design made the rich examples and illustrations here possible. Working with them has been a great pleasure.

Finally, I am indebted to a large number of reviewers, including Jeff Beehler, James Behling, Charlie Bess, Rossen Blagoev, Rob Caron, Wendy Chun, Kevin P. Davis, Cristof Falk, Linda Fernandez, Ken Garove, Bill Gibson, Martin Heller, Bijan Javidi, Yulin Jin, Cem Kaner, Chris Kinsman, Aaron Kowall, Clementino Mendonca, Thomas Murphy, Gary Pollice, Tomas Restrepo, Johanna Rothman, Joel Semeniuk, Will Stott, Dan Sullivan, David Trowbridge, Mike Turner, Kumar Vadaparty, and Peter Williams. Kim Boedigheimer, Ben Lawson, and Michael Thurston of Addison-Wesley were extremely helpful in the endgame. Without the advice and suggestions of all these reviewers, this book would have been a small fraction of what it became.

Sam Guckenheimer
Redmond, WA
January 2006