This past Sunday, May 31, 2010 saw the kickoff event for the Scrum Bangalore user group (photos available here). It was a 6-hour mini-conference that featured 2 speakers, and open-space, networking, and several prizes. Also in attendance were the Agile Bangalore user group, an online community led by Vinay Krishna.
Rahul Sah Kicks Off The Event
Scrum Bangalore is the product of Rahul Sah of the Dutch company iSense Prowareness. He started the event by setting a vision: there is a huge gap between the demand and the support for Scrum in Bangalore. He said that he was charged by Jeff Sutherland to start something, when it was observed that the most Google searches for “Scrum” originate in Bangalore, more than anywhere else in the world. Before this month, there were no formal user groups supporting the local Agile practitioner community in Bangalore; now there are two.
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Pete Deemer Wows the Crowd.
The headliner was long-time South Asian Scrum trainer, Pete Deemer. He shared with us his 19 keys to successful agile adoption. It was a great talk with lots of energy and insights. At the end of the talk, he amazed the group with several giveaways, including a copy of Mike Cohn’s latest book for *everyone*. A very generous gesture indeed. 
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The “Amriki Gaura” Gives it a Go
In the afternoon, I got up and introduced myself to the crowd, sharing my story of starting an Agile consultancy in India. I then facilitated a group discussion about how to overcome key challenges with Agile Adoption. We used the “12 Key Objections to Change” from the NY Times bestseller Switch (a great book I will discuss later). Both Pete and the group offered some excellent points:
- Change is like a rebirth
- Many agile teams are technically proficient, but behaviorally are still stuck
- Driving in Bangalore is the essence of a self-organized system
- Scrum is a paradox: we offer specific guidance on success, but must encourage the team to choose its own direction
Agile India Moves Forward.
Afterwards, I had some drinks with the new leadership team of the Agile Software Community of India (ASCI). We talked about the 2010 spike of activity in India around Agile projects, such as:
- Agile Coaches camp in Goa earlier this year
- Launching of 2 user groups in Bangalore
- Four (4) scrum trainers offering classes in India, instead of Pete Deemer being the only one
- The forthcoming announcement of the Scrum Day India event in August
It is an exciting time to be a part of this community. And I’m looking forward to an eventful remainder of 2010.
QUESTION: What other signs of increased interest & momentum around Agile engineering or Agile project management are you seeing in India ?
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