Tactical capabilities in agile NPD projects: insights from an autonomous car project in Sweden
Journal article, 2024

Research on project management and new product development (NPD) identifies both strategy and tactics as important for success. Whilst there is a lot of attention on strategy, few studies address the role of tactics in NPD projects. In the pursuit for increasing organisational abilities to manage uncertainty, agile is increasingly getting traction in large firms. Both tactical activities and agile methodology deal with adapting to emergent challenges and handling uncertainty in projects. This motivated this study of how an agile transformation initiative influences tactical activities within NPD projects. The paper is based on a longitudinal case study of Volvo Car Group’s autonomous car project. The case firm’s transformation from waterfall to agile method provided the possibility to understand how tactical activities differ between the two methods. By using observations from the case, we argue that agile development method facilitates the use of tactics in NPD projects.

agile

new product development

autonomous cars

Sweden

NPD

case study

tactics

empowered teams

Author

Gouthanan Pushpananthan

Chalmers, Technology Management and Economics, Innovation and R&D Management

Ludvig Lindlöf

Halmstad University

RISE Research Institutes of Sweden

Marcus Rothoff

Volvo

International Journal of Business Innovation and Research

1751-0252 (ISSN) 17510260 (eISSN)

Vol. 33 2 236-251

Subject Categories

Business Administration

DOI

10.1504/IJBIR.2024.136408

More information

Latest update

2/16/2024