Okay gang, some big news here: I’m teaming up with the gang at Ripple Rock to start an Agile consultancy in Bangalore, India.

The Dream
Many of you know that I married into a first-generation family from India. Well, shortly after we started having children, we started wondering out loud:

“What if we spent a couple years abroad, expose the kids to their grandparent’s heritage, maybe help them pick up the language? What if we then come back to the U.S. in time for the oldest to start high-school, and he’s already set up as a global citizen?”

After 10 years of marriage and 3 kids, we finally made it to India…and we fell in love. Since then, we started getting gradually more intentional about making it happen. We did some research and some praying, and came down to this: we need a stable pipeline of work in India before we can make the move.

The Deal
Earlier this year, I was networking with other Agile Project Management people at the 2010 Scrum Gathering in Orlando. While there, I met Colin Bird and Tom Reinsel from Ripple Rock. We discovered we both knew similar people, so I shared with them the dream. Colin looked at me with a stunned expression:

“Really? I have a client that needs boots on the ground in Bangalore ASAP. If you’re serious, then let’s talk.”

We started talking and came to the conviction that this made sense on so many levels: We had a client need, a corporate vision, and a collective family dream that all pointed to India. As a result, we decided that I would begin building a fully operational Ripple Rock office in Bangalore, offering two key services:

• Offshore Software Process Improvement: If you’re a large Global 100 that moved your IT operations offshore, and it’s not going as smoothly as you want, send me an email.
• Agile coaching, training, and certification for professionals across South Asia: If you are a South Asian professional in the technology field, and you’ve of Agile Engineering or Agile Project Management, but have not yet been able to get access to good resources, send me an email.

The official press release was posted minutes ago: “RippleRock recruits PMI Agile Community Founder to launch India Practice”

The Transition

On one hand, this is obviously very exciting. On the other hand, it means a bittersweet departure from Excella Consulting, and the team of a very talented group Agile practitioners there. I’ve been at Excella for 4 years, and have grown immeasurably as a direct result of their corporate culture. If there’s one company in Washington DC that exhibits the virtues of Dan Pink’s “autonomy, mastery, purpose”, it’s Excella. I love the people there, and I’m going to miss them tremendously.

Also, I’m going to miss DC. Seema and I have built incredibly strong friendships here in Washington DC over the last 15 years. We plan to live abroad for only a few years, but going so long without those friendships will be tough.

Still, some things will remain the same. I will be as active in the PMI Agile Community as ever, if not more so. I will also continue to promote Agile Project Management at conferences across the world. But I’ll be doing it from a completely different locale, which means new faces and new challenges.

It’s an exiting time, and I’ll be posting updates here early and often. I’m eager for you to join me in this new adventure…

Question: How many of you are based in Bangalore or familiar with commuting to India? What advice or tips to do you have.