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.