Project Management Model for In-House Projects

Abstract: Background/Problem Description: The purpose of project management is to keep track, organize and assure that the specific goal of a project will be accomplished before the project ends. Without a project management model, it is hard for an organization to monitor and fulfill the purpose of project management. Therefore, ESSIQ AB believes it would be beneficial to have a project management model when running their in- house projects. This belief laid the ground for this master thesis project. Having a project management model within an organization can also give a competitive advantage, and allow the organization to be more efficient, which is needed on today’s market. Purpose & Research Questions: The purpose of this master thesis project was to develop a project management model for small in-house projects at ESSIQ AB. Another purpose of this master thesis project was to collect information from best practices, the forefront in science and international guidelines, and to expand the knowledge within the field of project management. Based on the purpose, the following research questions were established: RQ1: How can a generic project management model be designed to efficiently manage small projects? RQ2: Can agile project management help organizations to manage project more flexibly? RQ3: What are the best practices within the field of project management, at other companies? Delimitations: A couple of delimitations have been set for the master thesis project. The framework to be developed will be a generic model but with a focus on Mechanics and Design/UX projects. The framework will be developed for small projects, normally consisting of five project members. However, the framework will be applicable for project sizes up to 15 members. Methodology: A couple of research strategies and methods were used for this master thesis project. When gathering the theoretical framework for this master thesis project, a literature collection was carried out during an exploratory research strategy. Further on, a descriptive strategy was used when semi-structured interviews were held at ESSIQ AB, which was the master thesis’s large case company. To collect best practices, seven other companies were used as smaller case companies. The interviews at the smaller case companies were open in their nature. During the model development phase, when combining and using the knowledge gathered through literature and empirical studies, the problem solving research strategy was applied. Results and Conclusion: The contribution from this master thesis project is the project management model created for in-house projects at ESSIQ AB. The project management model is a combination of traditionally standards and approaches, such as the Project Management Institute, and forefront science within agile management. Moreover, the model is a working method for project management and can cover complete project from their initiation until they are closed.