Contributors

I have a lot of people to thank for their role in the highly fulfilling but tough initiative of writing this book. First, I want to thank my entire family, especially my parents, my wife Samta and my daughter Shreya for their constant encouragement and support. It means a lot to me to see the pride in their eyes, as I became a publishing author.

Next, I wish to thank the leadership and my colleagues at ThoughtWorks in India and across the globe. It is only due to their wholehearted help, encouragement, and support that I gained the courage to think about writing a book and then take it to completion. The number of people who have helped me, directly and indirectly, are far too many to name specifically. However, a few names stand out as first among equals. Neal Ford played a key role in inspiring me, as he was the first to suggest that I write a book, about six years ago. Jean-Marc (JM) Domaingue, was a solid pillar of support right from the time I put pen to paper and always made time to give feedback on raw content. Gary O'Brien gave me candid advice on how I should go about building the narrative of the book. I also wish to thank Guo Xiao for graciously agreeing to write one of the two forewords for the book.

I wish to thank Dr. Linda Rising, a globally renowned thought leader, for writing an insightful foreword, and for agreeing to do so despite having an extremely busy calendar.

I am grateful to all those who wrote the endorsements for the book. These people are senior corporate and thought leaders and they have spared their valuable time to read the imperfect manuscript and write the endorsements. Thank you, João Cardoso, Christopher Carydias, Kathryn Chase, Ashwin Dugar, Peter How, Ramaswamy Iyer, Rash Khan, Adrian Lander, Diana Larsen, Evan Leybourn, R. Mosesraj, Edward J. Ottensmeyer, Chiranya Prachaseri, Sriram Narayan, Madhur Saxena, Raj Swaminathan, Thierry Thibault, Tathagat Varma and Marianne Vosloo. Your endorsements have enhanced the credibility of the book.

I wish to thank Chandra Srivastava for the important role she played in shaping the contents of the book. She was the first person to review each chapter, leveraging her Agile expertise and experience.  Her validation and feedback gave me the confidence that the content was ready to be submitted to the publisher. I also owe my thanks to my friends and ex-colleagues, for providing critiques, which helped to improve the contents of the book.

My sincere thanks to Packt Publishing for partnering with me to make this book a reality. I was pleasantly surprised that they work in an Agile way: they had me deliver the content incrementally and iteratively, which helped me to constantly remain focused on my deliverables. My special thanks to Ben Renow-Clarke, Acquisitions Managing Editor, Radhika Atitkar and her predecessor Savvy Sequeira, Project Editor, Joanne Lovell, Development Editor and Bhagyashree Rai, Technical Editor for their responsiveness and support. I also wish thank Allan Kelly, whom Packt engaged as the Technical Reviewer for the book. His reviews were very helpful as he pointed out a few "blind spots" in the content.

Lastly, I wish to thank all my friends and well-wishers for keeping me inspired throughout this exciting journey to becoming an author.