The increased competition and volatile market today have led to the increased interest in agile management control systems. Previous studies have been made on the subject where researchers argue that there is a need for organizations to become agile. However, many practitioners seem hesitant to only implement agile approaches. This study explores how hybrid management control systems are developed and used over time in a large organization. This is a case study that uses semi-structured interviews to collect data. This study found that an agile management control system was not a one-size-fits-all solution. The reason for this is because organizational context and obstacles prevent the organization from fully committing to one management idea. This study concludes that organizations are hesitant to change long-time used practices. Also, managers and employees have different preferences where managers value traditional approaches more while employees prefer agile approaches. Therefore, organizations incorporate parts from various management systems that fit their organization and develop a hybrid management control system.

During the past decades, a substantial amount of research efforts have been made regarding making the web and digital content more accessible. However, research states that the current accessibility state globally is yet not sufficient, resulting in excluding a large group of people due to disabilities. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the current accessibility state of the prototype version of Ubisoft Connect’s chat application and how to make accessibility a natural part of a team's existing agile processes. This is performed by gathering knowledge about a team's current working processes by conducting two qualitative interviews, along with a nine-week observation, allowing us to partake in their processes when implementing changes. To evaluate the chat's current accessibility state, two of the most used usability evaluation techniques are used: heuristic evaluation and user testing. The heuristic evaluation is based on the internationally recognized standard: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1. The findings from the heuristic evaluation are implemented by the Ubisoft Connect team in the chat prototype and are later tested by 4 testers with disabilities. The result of this case study shows that heuristic evaluation and user testing should be used to complement each other since one method alone cannot create a valid accessibility state. Furthermore, it shows that agile management is the preferred method when making these changes.

The diploma thesis treats project management in the environment of software development. The thesis describes the theory and method PRINCE2 Agile methodology implementation in the development department with a focus on agile approaches. Configuration of a part of the information system dedicated to the support of project management is also included in the thesis.

The video game industry has gone through a dramatic change over the last few decades, yetseveral reports show that there are currently many challenges that developers face in their dailywork. A major challenge includes difficulties of getting projects to close within set time andresource restraints. This is something that indicates a connection to the management methodsbeing used, among which Agile management is a popular framework that many turn to. Thisthesis searches for connections between challenges in video game development and the usage ofagile methods like Scrum and Kanban. For this, a qualitative research strategy was used in orderto look into the experiences of video game developers. Five semi-structured interviews with atotal of eleven respondents were conducted. As a complement, a quantitative web-based surveywas made where 23 people participated. The results of this study show that challengespreviously defined within the video game industry, including feature creep, crunch periods anda stressful work pace can also be identified in the industry in southern Sweden to some extent.Underlying patterns indicate the industrial culture as an explanation for an incorrectimplementation of agile methods, which could eventually lead to issues surrounding riskmanagement in projects.

The budgeting debate concerns that traditional budgets have become dysfunctional in today’s volatile business environment. Thus, it can seem logical that organisations would implement alternatives, and beyond budgeting has become popular. Nevertheless, knowledge of beyond budgeting’s practical implications is limited, and future research needs to study organisations that have implemented beyond budgeting. This study, therefore, investigates beyond budgeting in practice through a qualitative multiple case study with eight semi-structured interviews, whose respondents come from four retail organisations. The study intends to research reasons for choosing beyond budgeting, how the beyond budgeting solution is designed and what consequences beyond budgeting implies. The study finds that organisations choose to implement beyond budgeting for several reasons, some similar, such as budgets being time-consuming and aiming for higher adaptability, and some more organisation specific. The study also finds that the beyond budgeting solutions differ, for example, the companies’ management processes are designed differently. However, no organisation intentionally implemented all beyond budgeting principles, and all have a high focus on the management processes. Further, the study finds that the company's consequences implies some similarities and differences. For example, higher adaptability was a consistent outcome. Moreover, the study shows that all companies experienced consequences that were unanticipated. Lastly, the study implies that an organisation’s contingencies affects reasons, beyond budgeting solution and outcomes as beyond budgeting should be adjusted to its situation.

No / With the advent and maturity of the internet, reverse electronic auctions (e-auctions) are now an important mechanism for public and private sector organisations, in the procurement of goods and services. Here, a novel link is made between reverse electronic auctions (e-auctions) and its potential impact on organisational agility, a link not previously developed in the literature. In this paper, we justify this relationship from a theoretical perspective. We investigate how information and internet technology impacts procurement, by an analysis and evaluation of the literature. E-auctions are reviewed and organisational agility defined; the advantages of agile management are also identified and the role that e-auctions can play in achieving this, discussed. Strategies for re-aligning reverse e-auctions in support of organisational agility are proposed and the advantages of this process discussed. Recommendations for future practice that will maximise the chances of realising agile systems management are also presented. Finally, areas for further research are identified.

面對日趨活躍的跨領域互動潮流與日益縮短的產品生命週期及市場反應時間等三項因素，全球產業普遍面臨越來越嚴峻的競爭環境，企業因應變化和不確定性的挑戰越來越大。在這種情況下，企業為了能夠持續存活及維繫本身的競生優勢，他們必須要用一種更為敏捷的方式來回應環境中的變化和不確定性。敏捷策略代表的就是一種將「從市場上取得的訊息回饋並融入到公司的價值鏈內」的策略，它的目的是讓企業能夠更迅速調整自身的資源來回應市場的狀況。儘管目前對敏捷策略有許多不同的看法，但實際上「敏捷」所代表的意義仍然找不到一個如同「精實生產」一樣具體而明確的說法。本研究建立於個案研究的基礎之上，來找出企業在面對不同的競爭條件以及產業條件之下所會採用的敏捷策略的模式及作法。 研究發現，即便是被認為敏捷範例的企業，它們仍然不一定全方位的採行敏捷策略。公司根據企業在管理上的複雜度，選擇專注於商業環境中的特定面向來導入敏捷作為。本研究發現，所有個案公司在四個敏捷面向中至少採行其中兩個面向。首先，內部組織和文化面向皆調整為允許並提升靈活性和適應性。接著，公司透過調整經營和生產面向來相增加企業的靈活性和適應性。除了調整內部的運作之外，這些公司會依據公司的核心優勢或是在其他面向管理的複雜度來決定應該處理哪一個外部運作面向。本研究發現當企業面臨複雜的供應網絡時，他們會嘗試將資源分配來跟合作夥伴建立敏捷關係;另外，只有企業只有在必須直接及快速面對並回應快速變化的客戶或市場的需求時，他們才會將資源分配以便能夠敏捷地將客戶的聲音和市場的訊息融入產品或服務。 / As global business environment is experiencing much fiercer competitions from the increased interactions across country and industry boundaries, shorter product life cycle, shorter respond time, more variation and uncertainties are becoming major challenges to corporations nowadays. The increased competition forces companies to react to changes and uncertainties in an agile way, in terms of connecting resources internally and externally, in order to survive and to sustain their competitive advantages. Agility represents a strategy for companies to integrate information on the market into their value chain, making it easier and faster for the companies to leverage their resources and capabilities to respond to market situations in a quick manner. Despite the evolvement of different agility viewpoints, the concept of agility has yet to be solidly defines as it has been done on such concepts as lean manufacturing. On the basis of a multiple case study, this paper aims to identify the ways companies could adapt the agility strategy under different competitive circumstances based on the companies’ and their corresponding industries’ situation. The study finds that even companies recognized as agile examples are not performing all-around comprehensive across all aspects of agility. Companies choose to concentrate on specific agility dimensions based on the companies’ actual complications managing the business environment. However, commonalities exist when all case companies are found to perform practice agilely in two of the four dimensions. The internal organization and culture dimension is adjusted to allow flexibility and adaptability. Furthermore, the companies increase the companies’ versatility and adjustability by adjusting the operations and manufacturing dimension. On top of the adjusted internal operation, the companies should then decide to focus on the external environment that is complicated to manage or is fatally related to the companies’ core competencies. It is found only companies with complicated supply network would attempt to allocate resources into establishing agile relationship with their partners; and only companies with direct pressure to react to fast changing customer or market demand would allocate resources into agilely adapting customers’ voices and/or market information into their products or services.

This diploma thesis deals with proposals in the area of inner development of a company that is very dynamically growing and operating in the digital marketing industry situated in Brno. Theoretical part defines basic concepts of development management and growing pains including description of selected analytical or evaluation methods. Analyses regarding context, environment and functioning of the company are presented in the analytical part of this thesis. Based on these analyses are presented key factors. New designs come out of the conclusions and results of the evaluation part. It contains the description of changes and precautions including their implementation. This, as a goal, will improve current processes leading to increasing quality service and customer satisfaction.

The increase of globalization of business led to the creation of global virtual software development teams in which communication plays an important role. The lack of recent studies raises the need to investigate communication in the context of agile and the current Covid-19 pandemic. This study identifies in literature three factors present in global virtual software development teams: technology, culture, and trust. It aims to explore how they influence internal communication. A qualitative method is conducted on a case study by combining data collected from semi-structured interviews and observations. The case study is a global virtual software development team which implemented the agile Scrum methodology. The findings provide a deep understanding of the positive and negative influences of the factors on communication, including their interrelations and context. Some of the main findings are: (I) the best set up for collaboration among global team members is the combination of synchronous and asynchronous communication through technological tools, (II) cultural diversity leads to differences in the ways members communicate, (III) trust is the precondition of working collaboratively and communicating effectively, (IV) global team members need to occasionally have in-person interactions to nurture their interpersonal relations, (V) the agile Scrum methodology influences internal communication positively, (VI) each communication factor is influenced by time; thus, the theoretical framework developed for this study is updated with this addition, (VII) the Covid- 19 pandemic affects communication to a certain extent.

No / This paper presents a stochastic automaton approach to stock ordering for retailers of time-limited goods, in the modern supply chain network. The rationale applied is that by ordering in small quantities frequently, overstocking will be reduced, capital liquidity improved and wastage limited. A consequence for the complete supply chain is that such an approach could substantially minimise the reactive bullwhip effect, leading to more efficient utilisation, production and agility throughout the chain. Such agility and flexibility can only be achieved by full integration of stock inventory monitoring technologies (such as RFID) with enterprise integration systems (such as ERP) connected to suppliers, mediated by the internet. We undertake a comparative simulation study of stock ordering using a stochastic automaton and a naive traditional approach. This shows that stochastic ordering, prompted by a stochastic automaton, exhibits characteristic properties that are a prerequisite for reducing the bullwhip effect, thus enabling agile inventory management.