Many organizations turn to agile methods and practices in their organization in order to retain competitiveness in today's rapidly changing environment and changing customer demands. Researchers claim agile practices, such as Agile Project Management to be most successful if implemented in the entire organization, in an all-or-nothing approach. However, as many traditional organizations are attempting to adopt agile principles such as APM, few studies have been made to what extent agile methods and practices can be successful in traditional organizations. This research investigates how a APM-team at SEB can function in accordance to agile philosophy, and further, if the legacy and traditional structures at SEB counteract the APM-team. The study is a single case study, investigating one APM-team at SEB through semi-structured interviews and organizational documents. In order to answer the research question, a model of analysis was derived in order to capture the important theoretical concepts. It was found that the investigated APM-team in SEB does not function fully in order with agile philosophies, and further that the traditional structures and legacy at SEB hinders the APMteam to work according to agile philosophies. It was also found that the APM-team experienced difficulties with the actual agile way of working, which could affect their ability to work in accordance with said practices. Further research is needed for a greater context to fully understand how traditional organizations can counteract agile initiatives.

The increase for project efficiency has led to some businesses adopting the agile project management model. This research project has studied how a project-oriented manufacturing company has introduced the agile model in its Research & Development organization. The report here is based on qualitative analysis of 9 interviews with respondents and intends to evaluate how far the agile transformation in the Research & Development organization has progressed. The report further aims to describe how the respondents have perceived and have been affected by the agile transformation.  The respondents in this study have been working as developers and have experienced the agile transformation in the organization from day one. The respondents´ experiences have been analyzed using Self-Determination Theory and the mediating role of psychological safety. Furthermore, previous studies on project transition and agile transformation have been used in the analysis.  This research study has also sought to learn how the temporary organization has introduced internal improvements in its organization through the introduction of the agile model.

Context and background: Requirements engineering(RE) is a first and a very important phase in any software development which helps in building a suitable and customer satisfactory product. In the past few years, the use of Agile software development has become popular in the industry. Customer communication plays an important role in any software development life cycle. Customers state the requirements needed to develop a product in the Requirements Engineering phase. A project is likely to fail due to problems in customer communication during the RE phase. Objective: This thesis aims to study the Customer communication challenges in Agile requirements engineering, prioritize these challenges, and also find out the mitigation strategies to overcome these challenges. Research Method: A systematic mapping study is conducted to find out the customer communication challenges. Based on the data collected from the systematic mapping study, a survey is conducted to find out the mitigation strategies to overcome the customer communication challenges faced in the RE phase and also prioritize these challenges. Results: Based on the data collected from the systematic mapping study, a total of 18 customer communication challenges are identified. In the second step, a survey is conducted based on the identified challenges. The prioritization of these challenges is done by calculating the risk analysis of the challenges from the survey data. And finally, mitigation strategies are mentioned to overcome all the identified 18 challenges.

The automotive industry has seen revolutionary changes in the past two decades. Vehicles are starting to incorporate within themselves a significant amount of electronic and software based components, due to which the industry has seen rapidly changing customer requirements. The traditional work processes that automotive companies have ever so often employed, with excessive documentation, inefficient work teams and redundant reporting have proven to be insufficient in the newer fast-paced environment. Agile project management methods, as the name suggests, could be a tool that these companies can utilise in order to tackle such concerns. Agile methods, until a few years ago, had constrained themselves to dynamic software development applications, but they are now slowly starting to penetrate the automotive sector. This study, hence, tries to identify the factors that contribute to an automotive organisation’s decision to transform itself into an Agile based organisation, the challenges they encounter during the change process and the subsequent impact they see post transformation.   This thesis takes the form of a case study that has been conducted within the Swedish commercial vehicle company Volvo Trucks, a subsidiary of AB Volvo. Empirics were gathered in the form of interviews and surveys to get a deeper understanding of the internal processes and the transformational journey that helped Volvo Trucks become an agile based organisation. The collected empirical data is then further interpreted through the lens of theories pertaining to change and change management. Our findings suggest that the need for a transformation from traditional methods of management to agile can be driven by forces that are both internal and external, where the forces can present themselves at the same time. The internal factors here being, the inherent dysfunctions of the traditional methods. Significant challenges faced during transformation are of an organisational nature, where a partially agile organisation struggles to coordinate between its agile and non-agile departments. Lastly, a boost in worker morale and operational advantages such as increased planning efficiency and project transparency have been seen as major benefits post transformation.

The world is under a constant change and digitalization. More and more products are being produced with the help of software and a popular way for companies to sell their products and services is via the cloud. For long products have been developed and produced with the help of project management. Methodologies have developed overtime to better fit the requirements and environment in which products are developed, but products and its development methods are evolving too quickly and applied theories are not keeping up with this change. The aim of this study is to investigate the challenges of SDP’s and parameters of optimization in SDP’s as well as to identify how the identified parameters will help project management in SDP’s. This was done by using an abductive approach and a qualitative method, designed to be exploratory. Interviews were conducted on individuals within the IT-sector and the collected empirics were analyzed together with theory. The findings of the study were that in order to improve a SDP’s process and success one needs to consider a number of parameters which consist of improving clarity of communication and ways of communication by using communication tools on a continuous basis with both the project team and all stakeholders. Organizations must ensure that they choose approaches based on a projects uncertainty rather than to choose an approach to be certain. The areas of which this study contributes to is the knowledge of how to manage projects that involve software development having the known project methodologies in mind. / Världen är under konstant förändring och digitalisering. Allt fler produkter utvecklas med hjälp av mjukvara och ett populärt sätt för företag att sälja sina produkter och tjänster är via molnet. Länge har produkter utvecklats och producerats med hjälp av projektledning. Metoderna har utvecklats över tiden till att vara bättre anpassade för de krav och miljöer som produkter utvecklas i, men produkter och dess utvecklingsmetoder utvecklas allt för snabbt och applicerade teorier hänger inte med i den snabba utvecklingen. Målet med denna studie är att undersöka mjukvaruutveckling projektets utmaningar och parametrar som optimerar mjukvaruutvecklingsprojekt, samt identifiera hur de identifierade parametrarna hjälper projektledning i mjukvaruutveckling. Detta gjordes genom att använda ett abduktivt angreppssätt och en kvalitativ metod, ämnat till att vara explorativ. Intervjuer gjordes på individer som befinner sig inom IT-sektorn och den samlade empirin analyserades tillsammans med teori. Resultaten av studien var att för att kunna optimera en mjukvaruutvecklingsprojekt processer och framgång så behöver man ha ett antal parametrar i åtanke och dessa består av att förbättra tydligheten i kommunikation och kommunikationsmetoder genom att utnyttja kommunikationsverktyg kontinuerligt med både samtliga projektmedlemmar och alla intressenter. Organisationer måste säkerhetsställa att de väljer en projektmetod baserat på projektets osäkerhet snarare än att välja en projektmetod baserat på vad man är säker på. Denna studie bidrar till kunskapen om hur man hanterar projektledning med de kända projekt metoderna i åtanke i områden som involverar mjukvaruutveckling.

Syfte: Studiens syfte är att öka förståelsen för de konsekvenser som uppkommer till följd avett agilt arbetssätt. Dessutom ämnar uppsatsen bidra med en mer balanserad bild av det agilaarbetssättets effekt. Metod: Studien behandlar fenomenet agilitet och har tagit utgångspunkt i en kvalitativ studiemed en induktiv forskningsansats. Studien har även tillämpat en flerfallstudie därsemistrukturerade intervjuer använts som datainsamlingsmetod. Slutsats: Studien visar att medarbetare har upplevt en frånvarande ledning vid den agilaimplementeringen och att de tar beslut som inte går i linje med det agila arbetssättet.Medarbetarna har upplevt att det funnits ett fokus på den praktiska omställningen framförskapandet av de kulturella förutsättningarna som krävs för att arbeta agilt. Vidare visarstudiens resultat att mellancheferna har upplevt att de behövt ändra ledarstil och släppa ifrånsig makt till medarbetare som i sin tur har upplevt ett ökat ägandeskap. De agila arbetssättetmedför negativa aspekter såsom att det Agila Manifestet övertolkas för att passa in på allaverksamhetsområden och att flera parallella arbetssätt uppstår och leder till förvirring blandmedarbetarna. Vidare kan det agila arbetssättet medföra en högre stressnivå, en ökadarbetsbelastning, ett överskott på mellanchefer och exkludering av vissa grupper. / Purpose: The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of the consequences thatarise as a result of an agile way of working. In addition, the study aims to provide a morebalanced view of the impact of the agile way of working. Method: The study addresses the phenomenon of agility and is based on a qualitative studywith an inductive research approach. The study has applied a multiple case study wheresemi-structured interviews were used as the data collection method. Conclusion: The study shows that employees have experienced an absence of managementduring the agile implementation and that they make decisions that are not in line with theagile way of working. Employees have experienced that there has been a focus on thepractical transition rather than the creation of the cultural conditions required to work agile.Furthermore, the study results show that middle managers have experienced that they havehad to change their leadership style and transfer power to employees who in turn haveexperienced increased ownership. The agile way of working entails negative aspects such asthe Agile Manifesto being overinterpreted to fit in all areas of operation and several parallelways of working arise and lead to confusion among employees. Furthermore, the agileapproach can lead to higher stress levels, an increased workload, an excess of middlemanagers and the exclusion of certain groups.

För att bli konkurrenskraftiga behöver organisationer bli agila. Genom nya arbetssätt och tankesätt rusta upp sig för framtiden där de anpassar till dagens snabbrörliga värld, som är avgörande för organisationens överlevnad. En viktig förutsättning för att lyckas skapa agila organisationer är ett genuint ledarskap där ledaregenskaper som att leda sig själv och att skapa självorganiserade team är viktiga faktorer. Telekommunikationsföretaget som denna studie undersöker, arbetar till en viss del agilt men har fortfarande det traditionella ledarskapet kvar. De arbetar med att beslut ska kunna fattas där arbetet sker, vilket kan skapas genom att arbeta agilt där teamen är självorganiserade och kan leda sig själva. Studiens syfte är att se nuläget med ledarskapet på Telia och vilka egenskaper som skulle behöva utvecklas för att komma närmare ett agilt ledarskap. Studien tillämpar en kvalitativ forskningsmetodik, diskursanalys där data tolkats på mjuka värden så som inspelade videofilmer, information på webben, empiri från Telia samt litteratur. Teorier inom industriell teknik som delar av hörnstensmodellen och ledarskapsstilar tillämpas för att analysera och dra slutsats. Slutsatsen är att Telia behöver fokusera på att utveckla ledaregenskaper som att skapa tillit, transparens, anpassningsbarhet, delegering samt utveckla självtillit, självkännedom och självinsikt. Utifrån slutsatsen har förbättringsförslag tagits fram som att ständigt utveckla självkännedom, självinsikt och självtillit som ledare så att teamen och medarbetare blir säkra på sitt eget agerande och egna beslut. Samt att utveckla engagemang, ödmjukhet, framtid tänkande och förmågan att anpassa sig snabbt till förändringar. / To be competitive, organizations need to become agile. Through new ways of working and thinking, they prepare for the future where they adapt to today's fast-moving and changing world, which is crucial for the organization's survival. An important prerequisite for succeeding in creating agile organizations is genuine leadership, where leadership characteristics such as leading oneself and creating self-organized teams are important. The telecommunications company that this study examines, works to some extent agile but still retains the traditional leadership. They make decisions where the work takes place, which can be created by working agile where the teams are self-organized and can lead themselves. The purpose of the study is to see the current state of leadership at Telia and what characteristics would need to be developed to get closer to agile leadership. The study applies a qualitative research methodology, discourse analysis where data has been interpreted on soft values such as recorded videos, information on the web, empirical data from Telia and literature. Theories in industrial technology as parts of the cornerstone model and leadership styles are applied to analyze and draw conclusions. The conclusion is that Telia needs to focus on developing leadership characteristics such as creating trust, transparency, adaptability, delegation and developing self-confidence, selfawareness and self-insight. Based on the conclusion, improvement proposals have been developed such as constantly developing self-knowledge, self-insight and self-confidence as leaders so that the teams and employees become confident in their own actions and decisions. As well as developing commitment, humility, future thinking and the ability to adapt quickly to change.

User involvement is becoming more prevalent in system development as it has been shown to improve user satisfaction, usability, and the overall quality of the finished system. However, users have often been only minimally involved in traditional development methods. This study examines the impact of user involvement on work processes within companies that adopt this approach. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews in a N-study of several companies. The results provide a deeper understanding of how companies can involve users in their projects, and how this affects their work processes, as well as the study shows which methods are currently used for user participation. Additionally, the study discusses both the positive and negative aspects of user involvement. An interesting aspect that emerges in the study is that many companies do not use formal methods or guidelines when involving users in system development. / Användarmedverkan blir allt vanligare inom systemutveckling då det kan förbättra användarnöjdhet, användbarhet och kvaliteten på det färdiga systemet. Trots detta involveras användare ofta endast i begränsad omfattning i traditionella utvecklingsmetoder.  Denna studie undersöker vilken påverkan användarmedverkan har på arbetsprocessen inom företag som tillämpar detta tillvägagångssätt. Flera företag har jämförts i en N-studie, där data samlats in genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Resultatet ger en djupare förståelse av hur företag kan involvera användare i sina projekt, och hur detta påverkar deras arbetsprocess, samt visar vilka metoder som används vid användarmedverkan idag. I studien diskuteras också de positiva och negativa aspekterna av användarmedverkan. En intressant aspekt som framkommer i studien är att många företag inte använder formella metoder eller riktlinjer när de involverar användare i systemutvecklingen.

With its core in adaptability and change responsiveness, the Agile methodology has become a popular application of the project process within the often volatile environment of today’s software development projects. The Agile methodology emphasizes interaction between project roles over documentation and formal processes. This higher interaction increases the need for functioning information dissemination throughout the entire project process. The study was carried out at a small sized Swedish IT consultancy firm. The company wished to acquire a project management and planning software tool to support the entire project process and all involved project roles. However, awareness of areas in the project process in need of support was not entirely clear. Therefore, the objective of the study was to investigate the company’s application of the Agile project process and identify potential challenges. Furthermore, the objective was to investigate how a project management and planning software tool can support the Agile project process within software development. The thesis was carried out as an abductive case study, where qualitative data collection methods and literature studies were combined. As a result from the study, two main conclusions have been drawn. Firstly: requirements engineering, the customer role, communication, and knowledge transfer were concluded as prominent challenges in the project process in need of increased support. Secondly, a project management and planning software tool can support the project process by: increasing the communication and collaboration abilities, providing holistic and historical project overview, providing a single storage location, and providing structure. Furthermore, the study has also shown that the project management and planning software tool needs to interact with the Agile project process in order to provide successful support. As final contribution, the Interaction model was created. The model visualizes the main areas in which a project management and planning software tool must interact with the Agile process, in order to support the entire project process successfully. / Genom dess anpassningsförmåga och förändringsmottaglighet har den Agila metodiken blivit en populär tillämpning för projektprocessen inom mjukvaruutveckling, en miljö där snabba förändringar tillhör vardagen. Den Agila metodiken framhäver interaktion mellan projektroller  framför  dokumentation  och  formella  processer,  vilket  ökar  behovet  av fungerande informationsspridning genom hela projektprocessen. Studien  har  utförts  hos  ett  mindre  svenskt  IT-konsultföretag,  vilket  önskade  att införskaffa en programvara för ett projektlednings- och planeringsverktyg som kan stötta hela  projektprocessen  och  alla  involverade  projektroller.  Medvetenheten  kring  de områden i projektprocessen som är i behov av stöd var däremot inte helt tydlig. Målet med   studien   var   därför   att   undersöka   företagets   tillämpning   av   den   Agila projektprocessen  och  identifiera  eventuella  utmaningar.  Vidare  var  målet  också  att undersöka hur en programvara för ett projektlednings- och planeringsverktyg kan stödja den Agila projektprocessen inom mjukvaruutveckling. Examensarbetet utfördes som en abduktiv fallstudie där flera kvalitativa datainsamlingsmetoder användes tillsammans med litteraturstudier. Som resultat av studien har två huvudslutsatser dragits. För det första; kravhantering, kundrollen, kommunikation  och  kunskapsöverföring  identifierades som framträdande utmaningar i projektprocessen i behov av ökat stöd. För det andra, att en programvara för ett projektlednings- och planeringsverktyg kan stödja projektprocessen genom att; förbättra  kommunikations-  och  samarbetsmöjligheterna,  ge  en  övergripande  och historisk projektöverblick, fungera som en gemensam lagringsplats och tillhandahålla struktur.  Vidare  har  studien  visat  att  en  programvara  för  ett  projektlednings-  och planeringsverktyg  måste  interagera  med  den  Agila  projektprocessen  för  att  ge  ett effektivt  stöd.  Som  ett  slutligt  bidrag  skapades  "the  Interaction  model",  vilken visualiserar huvudområdena inom vilka en programvara för ett  projektlednings- och planeringsverktyg måste interagera med projektprocessen för att ge ett fullt stöd till processen.

Agile is on the rise. The popular software development practice is making its way over to hardware development and companies are adopting it to reap the benefits. This phenomenon has been investigated to some degree and many companies are still trying to figure out if it is a useful way of working for them or not. At the Swedish MedTech company, Elekta, mechanical designers and engineers believe that hardware prototyping could be done better and faster than today. Elekta made an agile transformation to SAFe, which stands for Scaled Agile Framework, a few years ago and the hardware development struggle to match the speed of the development of software. Not much literature is aimed at agile hardware prototyping in particular. In the pursuit of adapting agile hardware development literature particularly to the prototyping process and investigating the actual process at the company, the case study presented in this report was formed. First, to explore the topic, a pre-study of orienting interviews was conducted and was complemented by a literature review. These then made up the basis for a qualitative interview study that consisted of semi-structured interviews with 12 employees at Elekta, as well as 5 employees at 5 other companies for benchmarking. The goals of this thesis project were to make recommendations to Elekta on how to adapt their prototyping process to better fit agile, as well as contribute to the relatively unexplored field of agile hardware prototyping. The case study resulted in a number of identified obstacles and enablers a company might have when implementing agile frameworks for hardware prototyping. Some of the obstacles identified were the difficulty of planning and dividing hardware in smaller tasks, not having in-house production and the difficulty to adapt to an agile mindset and focusing too much on the process of SAFe. Some of the enablers found were modularity, 3D-printing and having in-house capabilities for manufacturing prototypes. A prototyping workshop enables shorter feedback loops, which in turn enables a more agile process. The study also resulted in suggestions to Elekta, mainly concerning setting up a new prototyping workshop solution for the company, to adapt the prototyping process to better fit agile. / Agila arbetssätt blir alltmer populära. Metoderna som härstammar från mjukvaruutveckling spiller nu över till hårdvaruutveckling när företag försöker ta nästa steg mot mer moderna arbetssätt. Agil hårdvaruutveckling har studerats tidigare och många företag försöker fortfarande ta reda på om det är något för dem. På det svenska MedTech-bolaget Elekta tror konstruktörer och andra ingenjörer att hårdvaruprototypande kan gå att göra bättre och snabbare. Elekta införde SAFe, som står för Scaled Agile Framework, för några år sedan men har svårt att utveckla hårdvara lika snabbt som mjukvara. Det finns inte mycket litteratur som specifikt rör agilt hårdvaruprototypande. För att utforska ämnet genomfördes en fallstudie på Elekta. Studien inleddes med orienterande intervjuer som kompletterades av en litteraturstudie om agil hårdvaruutveckling. Dessa lade sedan grunden för den kvalitativa undersökningen som bestod av semistrukturerade intervjuer med 12 personer på Elekta samt 5 personer på andra företag som också hanterar hårdvaruprototypande. Målen med detta examensarbete var att ge Elekta rekommendationer om hur de ska anpassa sin prototypprocess för att bättre passa agila arbetssätt och att kunna bidra till det relativt outforskade ämnet, agilt hårdvaruprototypande. Fallstudien resulterade i identifiering av ett antal hinder och möjligheter som ett företag kan uppleva när de implementerar agila arbetssätt för hårdvaruprototypande. Några exempel på hinder var svårigheter med att planera och dela upp hårdvara i mindre uppgifter, att inte ha produktion in-house och svårigheten med att anamma ett agilt tankesätt istället för att fokusera för mycket på en metod eller struktur. Exempel på möjliggörare var modularitet, 3D-printning och möjligheter till prototyptillverkning in-house. En prototypverkstad tillåter kortare feedback-loopar vilket i sin tur möjliggör en mer agil process. Undersökningen resulterade också i förslag till Elekta, främst i att bygga en ny verkstadslösning för prototyptillverkning för att bättre kunna anpassa prototypandet till agilitet.