Agile project portfolio management, new solutions and new challenges: preliminary findings from a case study of an agile organization

TY - CONF

T1 - Agile project portfolio management, new solutions and new challenges: preliminary findings from a case study of an agile organization

AU - Hansen, Lars Kristian

AU - Svejvig, Per

N1 - Conference code: 41/9

PY - 2018/8/5

Y1 - 2018/8/5

N2 - Encouraged by recent years’ progress in agile project portfolio management (PPM), we investigate how these practices manifest themselves, thereby addressing ongoing discussions about what implementing agile PPM practices means for real life organizations. Our analysis utilizes the rethinking project management framework including two complementary perspectives. One perspective, denoted as classical project management (CPM), highlights key characteristics of traditional PPM practices. A second perspective, denoted as rethinking project management (RPM), highlights characteristics of progressive PPM practices. We investigate a large Danish company by applying the research question: “How does agile PPM manifests itself in a real organization and what are the observed pros and cons?” Surprisingly, when summa-rizing our results, we find some traits of concepts from the CPM perspective that are manifested in strict control of projects and programs. Furthermore, we find the traits of the RPM perspective more dominating than the CPM perspective, and these traits are mostly found to have desirable effects. CPM traits seem to improve the organi-zation’s ability to cope with uncertainty, a so-called dynamic capability, and to foster learning via routinized and frequent feedback-loops. As less desirable effects, we find agile PPM practices potentially creating new types of complexity and clashing with power structures and existing management traditions. Taking into account the limitations of our single case study, and not least our primary research design, our research provides some insights on how agile PPM practices provide novel solutions but at the same time create new challenges for todays’ organizations.

AB - Encouraged by recent years’ progress in agile project portfolio management (PPM), we investigate how these practices manifest themselves, thereby addressing ongoing discussions about what implementing agile PPM practices means for real life organizations. Our analysis utilizes the rethinking project management framework including two complementary perspectives. One perspective, denoted as classical project management (CPM), highlights key characteristics of traditional PPM practices. A second perspective, denoted as rethinking project management (RPM), highlights characteristics of progressive PPM practices. We investigate a large Danish company by applying the research question: “How does agile PPM manifests itself in a real organization and what are the observed pros and cons?” Surprisingly, when summa-rizing our results, we find some traits of concepts from the CPM perspective that are manifested in strict control of projects and programs. Furthermore, we find the traits of the RPM perspective more dominating than the CPM perspective, and these traits are mostly found to have desirable effects. CPM traits seem to improve the organi-zation’s ability to cope with uncertainty, a so-called dynamic capability, and to foster learning via routinized and frequent feedback-loops. As less desirable effects, we find agile PPM practices potentially creating new types of complexity and clashing with power structures and existing management traditions. Taking into account the limitations of our single case study, and not least our primary research design, our research provides some insights on how agile PPM practices provide novel solutions but at the same time create new challenges for todays’ organizations.

KW - Project portfolio management

KW - rethinking

KW - agile development

KW - agile project portfolio management

KW - scaling agile

KW - safe

KW - project studies

M3 - Paper

T2 - IRIS41/SCIS9 Conference 2018

Y2 - 5 August 2018 through 8 August 2018

ER -