<p>This licentiate thesis discusses management and control ofan industrial business that implements several projects at thesame time, a so-called multi-project business. The questionthat will be answered is: What distinguish the management of amulti-project business and what is crucial for the managementto focus on? The thesis is based on a case study at a companycalled Adtranz Signal in Sweden. Adtranz Signal develops,designs and delivers signal and safety systems for the railway.They are a perfect example of a modern company that operatesthe main part of their business with projects.</p><p>The discussion will take us beyond the single project andabove the project manager. This is necessary because projectmanagement literature, by tradition, emphasizes on theindividual project, and the complexity of problems when aproject is executed isolated from the ordinary business. Todaythere are only a few empirical and theoretical studies ofmulti-project businesses, especially those that focuses on howindustrial companies use projects and lead project work.</p><p>The scientific contribution in this thesis consists of twoparts. The first part is a profound empirical description ofhow management, control and realization of a multi-projectbusiness work. The second part is a further development of theliterature considering management problems in a multi-projectbusiness. Finally there are three important conclusions pointedout:</p><p>•It exists dependencies and connections between theprojects in the companys multi-project business•Thedifferent dependencies can be categorized•Thedependencies and connections are important and must be handledsince they effect the management of the multi-projectbusiness</p><p><b>Keywords:</b>Management and control of a project business,industrial projects, multi-project business, multi-projectenvironment, project-based company, project management</p>

Competition in the market for small software companies is high and given the current global economic crisis, it is important for these companies to gain competitive advantage in the market. One of the weaknesses of the studied company is insufficiently described processes and thus possible areas of the process which are not properly or sufficiently supported by current IS infrastructure. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the process of project-based company that uses agile methodologies for software development and based on the results of process analysis to assess the current state of IT support processes with regard to the strategic objectives of the company to design the new IS infrastructure. To perform the process analysis, I used the Methodology for Modeling and Analysis of Business Process (MMABP). Subsequently, the processes identified in the analysis process were analysed from the perspective of the strategic objectives of the company and also in terms of their support in the current IS infrastructure. Based on these analyses, were identified areas of the processes that have poor or no support, at all. In the epilogue, I proposed modification of the existing infrastructure IS, where all the process will have the appropriate information support. The biggest changes were in support of business processes, where a new CRM system was proposed and a new intranet portal was introduced, which should cover the first phase of particularly poor information support of the current processes in the field of human resources management.

This licentiate thesis discusses management and control ofan industrial business that implements several projects at thesame time, a so-called multi-project business. The questionthat will be answered is: What distinguish the management of amulti-project business and what is crucial for the managementto focus on? The thesis is based on a case study at a companycalled Adtranz Signal in Sweden. Adtranz Signal develops,designs and delivers signal and safety systems for the railway.They are a perfect example of a modern company that operatesthe main part of their business with projects. The discussion will take us beyond the single project andabove the project manager. This is necessary because projectmanagement literature, by tradition, emphasizes on theindividual project, and the complexity of problems when aproject is executed isolated from the ordinary business. Todaythere are only a few empirical and theoretical studies ofmulti-project businesses, especially those that focuses on howindustrial companies use projects and lead project work. The scientific contribution in this thesis consists of twoparts. The first part is a profound empirical description ofhow management, control and realization of a multi-projectbusiness work. The second part is a further development of theliterature considering management problems in a multi-projectbusiness. Finally there are three important conclusions pointedout: •It exists dependencies and connections between theprojects in the companys multi-project business•Thedifferent dependencies can be categorized•Thedependencies and connections are important and must be handledsince they effect the management of the multi-projectbusiness Keywords:Management and control of a project business,industrial projects, multi-project business, multi-projectenvironment, project-based company, project management / <p>NR 20140805</p>