In his final Column for BPTrends, Tom Bellinson continues his role of providing thoughtful and well-articulated advice to process practitioners as they begin or continue their Agile journey. He will be missed as a regular contributor but has assured that he will continue to contribute as he has ideas that will be helpful.

Tom Bellinson provides a strong argument that organizations that rely on the chain of command and the control provided by a fear-based management system will fail spectacularly at agility. Why? Find out.

While preparing for an upcoming IRM UK Business Change & Transformation Conference, Tom Bellinson discussed an agile practice called the daily stand-up. The idea behind a stand-up is to promote the agile principle of “people and communication over process and tools.” Learn more about this practice which could prove useful to your team.

While preparing for the upcoming IRM UK Business Change & Transformation Conference, Tom Bellinson spoke with some people around his organization about an agile practice called the daily stand-up. What, you may wonder is the daily stand-up? Some new exercise? You better read inside to find out.

Tom Bellinson’s plan for 2021 is to shift his approach to The Agile Practitioner to shorter, more focused pieces on specific more practical topics that have come up during his own Agile practice. This month, he focuses on agility “writ large.” Follow him on his new approach. You will be rewarded.

Products can take countless shapes and forms. In the software industry, in which Tom Bellinson works products are actually provided as a service to the customer, but make no mistake, we are a product company. Tom Bellinson expounds upon what a product company means.

Tom Bellinson advises against standardization. If there’s one takeaway here, it is this: don’t standardize on one or two tools and force everyone to use them for their solution. Allow people to find the tools that fit their particular needs. This practice, he believes will result in a more productive staff and better outcomes that will more than justify the cost of the extra tools.

In this Column, Tom talks about two topics that consistently come up in software development, but, he insists, they can most definitely apply to other product development processes as well: The amount of work in progress and the coupling/interdependency of components.

Tom cites a quote from The Agile Manifesto which states that the definition of Agile is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools,” a phrase that he finds confusing. In this Column, he relates his efforts to uncover its meaning and shares his discovery with our readers.