Managing the Agile Scalability to implement Agile Project Portfolio Management : A Case Study within the Automotive Industry

Abstract: Emerging markets, development of new technologies, sustainability policies and change in customer demand are dramatically changing today’s economies. The business environment is more dynamic than ever before. One particular industry that is currently influenced by significant transformational forces is the automotive industry. These transformational forces, such as autonomy, connectivity and electrification, are driving the change towards a future state where shorter lead times and closer customer interaction will be essential in order to satisfy the needs of the changing market. To deal with external changes, organizations are increasingly focusing on agility as a way to gain new forms of competitive advantage. The benefits of agile methods at the team level has inspired the use of agile practices at a larger scale, all the way up to the portfolio level. Project portfolio management (PPM) connects the strategy of the organization with the distribution of resources across projects in the portfolio. There is little empirical evidence on the agile methods performed in PPM, thus of interest to study. Due to the high complexity at the portfolio level, it becomes increasingly difficult to scale agile methods. This thesis is based on a single-case study within the automotive industry to gain a better understanding of how a mature automotive company can manage the agile scalability to become more agile in their project portfolio management. An abductive approach was applied with gathering methods comprising interviews, documents and observations. The results of this thesis highlight the major deficiencies with the case company’s current PPM, as well as their performance in scaling agile.