The Bengaluru Scrum Gathering was an incredible event, bringing together Scrum practitioners from around the world with community members and Agile experts sharing their knowledge and latest industry trends.

Lt. Governor Puducherry, Kiran Bedi, PhD, gave an inspirational opening keynote at the Scrum Gathering in Bengaluru, India. She talked about how Scrum leads to trust, empowerment, alignment, and accountability.

Dr. Bedi is the current Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry with a background as an Indian Police Service officer, social activist, former tennis player and politician. As the first woman in India to have served with the Indian Police Service, she achieved the highest rank as Director General, Bureau of Police Research and Development of the government of India and was there for 35 years. She is the recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, also called Asia’s Nobel Peace Prize, for bringing about a positive relationship between police and the population. Dr. Bedi is a law graduate, holds a master’s, and is a PhD holding the postdoctoral Nehru Fellowship.

Hear an exclusive interview with Kiran Bedi following her opening Keynote presentation here:

Dr. Bedi spoke about signs of nature to succeed and how we should consider every day like a complete lifetime and live every 24 hours to contribute fully. “What is it we need to be in alignment with our current visionary, our current leader…”

She shared how 3 pillars for prosperity in Puducherry are Trust, Empowerment, and Accountability –
Building trust, empowering people, and having accountability. An underlying theme of the presentation was “It belongs to all”, emphasizing the importance of transparency and how sharing information is power. Speed with sustainability and benefits from constant learning with open communication leads to alignment. “Communication with people has to be need oriented.”

Dr. Bedi quoted Margaret Mead in a powerful statement “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, its the only thing that ever has.” She went on to share how their government holds open houses, like open spaces, that lead to transparency, accessibility, and visibility, which leads to learning, resolving and solving.

With so many concepts that Dr. Bedi shared aligned so much with the principles and values by which our community operates, the room was lit up with delight and excitement while twitter was filled with inspirational quotes by Dr. Bedi.

Dr. Bedi emphasizes the importance of leaders to share their intention and mission statement, asking citizens in town halls with open opportunity for getting feedback and following up with prioritizing and resolving issues.

So many of the ways that Dr. Bedi and her team work are aligned with the values and pillars of Agile and Scrum, however some of her most inspirational statements really challenged everyone that “Every day is like a complete lifetime. It must be lived to the full”, “We just have to believe we were born for a purpose”, and “…dare not give away a minute of your life – it’s to be dedicated for the cause you’re going…”

Agile Leadership

One of the recurring themes that arose in Bengaluru was the topic of Agile Leadership. With several presentations talking about the importance of how to effectively engage teams, the deeper impact that an Agile leader has to inspire people and provide guidance was widely discussed. Agile Leadership is an area that can truly set the stage for transforming the world of work with leaders that inspire a culture of agility and guide teams through applying Agile values, practices, and metrics that leave teams empowered.

Taking a collaborative continuous-improvement approach to organizational effectiveness can proactively combat organizational impediments while the Agile leader not only catalyzes change in themselves and others but also facilitates organizational change. Seeking more creative solutions through increased self-awareness, a growth mindset, and engaging others can bring innovative solutions to the organization.

As an Agile leader applies Agile values, approaches, and practices while personally integrating feedback and experiments, resulting in adapting their ways to continuously improve. Lead by example, understand the impact of culture, and start with your own personal transformation first then go on to inspire others. We caught up with several community members in Bengaluru, India to hear their perspective on Agile leadership and it was exciting to hear what they had to say.

Hear what the community members have to say about Agile leadership here:

Such great insight from the community on the importance of Agile Leadership:

“The shift which I am seeing around the leadership community is that leaders are more like a servant leader, they are becoming a coach. They don’t command and control anymore because the situations are becoming so complex that you can’t navigate the solution on your own. You have to trust your teams to find the best answer…”



“Hire the best talent, give them the space, give them the empowerment, leave the job to them. Guide them, give them the vision”

“…Agile leadership is a leader that facilitates that process and improves the thinking of their teams so they can find their solutions rather than giving them a solution and making them act on it.”


With environments of uncertainty, complexity, and rapid change, it is important than ever before for an Agile leader to be effective in how they lead and provide guidance and alignment while empowering the team to deliver more customer value.

See more on the Scrum Alliance new Certified Agile Leadership program:
https://www.scrumalliance.org/agile-leadership

Agile Outside of IT

Hear from Manny Gonzalez, CEO of Scrum Alliance, and several community members on what Agile Outside of IT means to them:


Really great insights from the community on Agile Outside of IT!

“What we see is that Scrum, evolving from software development and IT, showing that it has provided great value, is expanding into other areas of the organization. As it expands to other areas of organizations, the principles of Agile are becoming more and more critical.”

“…Agile is a way of doing work… how we can be more adaptive to frequent changes and improve… it’s not limited to IT only, as well as in our daily life, we can use Agile.”

“Agile has spread beyond IT… Schools, charities, churches… Scrum is not for software development, rather for complex work in general.”

“The new concept of agility if you want to take it beyond IT, it would be for solving social causes. So we have started something called social Scrum which is to use Scrum for solving social issues so that is what Agile beyond IT means to me”

See more applications of Agile Outside of IT:
https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/who-uses-scrum

Next Generation Scrum

Aaron Vadakkan is just 12 years old and he presented with his father, Manoj Vadakkan, on Scrum at home from a point of view you probably haven’t heard.

While using Scrum at home may not be a new concept to some, Aaron shares the other side of the experience – from a 12-year old’s perspective. Aaron talked about the benefits of using Scrum at home through personal stories and experiences including how the definition of done helped him and his brother stay out of trouble.

It’s really neat to see this application of Scrum not just outside of IT, but being used by families and children with great success! Aaron and Manoj encourage you to make your home fun and productive as well by engaging your kids to be part of their own upbringing, leveraging some self-organization and showing them techniques that can be applied throughout their school and future work experiences.

Hear some insights on how Scrum can be used at home:

“Scrum helps me at home to do the right things and do the things faster.”

“It helps us by selecting the right things to do during the week, organizing my work with the board and not forgetting anything.”

“I use the acceptance criteria and the definition of done so we know exactly when something should be moved to the ‘done’ column.”

Join the next Global Gathering!

With such an exciting community event, we welcome you to join us one of the upcoming Global Scrum Gatherings!

This Pulse of the Agile Community has been brought to you by the Scrum Alliance and the Agile Marketing Academy.

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