Acknowledgments
The second edition of the Sure Step book has been a long time coming, and I want to start by thanking the Packt Publishing team of editors and reviewers for their patience throughout this process. Authoring a book of this magnitude takes time and a lot of personal sacrifice, and it also requires an understanding family for which I am grateful. To my wife, Veena Shankar, and my daughters, Maya and Tara Shankar, who continue to be my pillars of strength and motivation.
My involvement with Sure Step dates back to 2007, beginning with my consulting role where I leveraged the methodology for solution delivery as well as on sales pursuits. Sure Step was a passion of mine, because I saw the impact it had on customer organizations as well as the solution delivery teams that were involved in making the customer successful. Last year, I changed roles and moved to a role focused on solution sales to our Microsoft Business Solutions customers. I continue to see the importance of the methodology, and it has also highlighted the importance of starting early with a structured process to clearly establish a tight linkage between the customer needs and their solution design.
Our Microsoft Dynamics suite of solutions continues to evolve into world-leading products, including the recent releases of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, CRM 2013, GP 2013, and NAV 2013. Our R&D teams are also investing their efforts in a wide range of tools, such as the Lifecycle Services tools, to help the customer's journey to a successful deployment of the solution. As the Sure Step methodology evolves, it takes on the role of the orchestrator, where it brings together these tools and other artifacts in a coherent manner that can be understood by the customer and delivery teams.
The success of Microsoft Dynamics can be pinned to its strong leadership team, starting with Kirill Tatarinov for his overall leadership, Hal Howard and Bob Stutz respectively for ERP and CRM Product Development, Mike Ehrenberg for his technical solution direction, and through to Neil Holloway and Wayne Morris for their sales and marketing leadership respectively. For the Sure Step methodology, besides these visionaries, we also have the support of leaders, including Richard Barnwell and Sri Srinivasan for AX, Bill Patterson for CRM, Paul White for NAV, Jeff Trosen for GP and SL, and Theo Gees and Ming Chao for Microsoft Services.
One of the Dynamics leaders on the team that I am personally thankful to is Julian Johnson for recognizing the impact of a methodology in driving customer success and for taking the time to pen the foreword for this book. I also want to thank the Sure Step R&D team for continuing to provide the latest releases of the content and toolset to the user base.
I want to thank my co-authors, Vincent and Nilesh. I have worked with both of them for several years, with Vincent as co-collaborator on the first book, and with Nilesh, on the R&D team for several releases. I appreciate their personal sacrifices for this book as well. We would also be remiss if we didn't thank our reviewers, Keith Dunkinson from AXPact/CRMPact, and Mohamed Aamer from Microsoft Support.
Finally, to the user base of Sure Step and to you the readers, thank you for your continued support and feedback for this methodology. We salute you and hope you enjoy this labor of our love.