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Digitalization, with its potential to enhance the openness of client–contractor knowledge collaboration (KC) at the front end of complex engineering projects, is gaining traction among project scholars and practitioners. Despite this growing interest, project actors still struggle to bring client and contractor experts into an open, digitally enabled collaborative space where they can freely access and cocreate project-related knowledge. In this context, our case study explores client–contractor KC in the front-end phase of oil and gas projects in Norway to understand why project actors struggle to achieve KC openness in the digital age. Based on our qualitative analysis, we developed a model that displays two intertwined aspects giving rise to tensions between knowledge sharing and protection. First, we show that these tensions stem from fragmented awareness of the expertise in the collaborating project organization. Second, we highlight how intrainstitutional complexity, instantiated in coexisting conflicting logics of digital and collaborative action, underlies divergent beliefs and behavior toward client–contractor KC and its digitalization. We offer novel insights into the project management literature by showcasing how organizational heterogeneity, in terms of expertise and institutions, challenges project organizations' pursuit of open, digitally enabled client–contractor KC during the front-end project phase., QC 20240201

This study examines the critical role of university IT departments in the digital transformation of higher education institutions. Despite their expertise, these departments often face challenges in facilitating digital transformation. Through a historical case study of a prominent research university, this paper explores the evolution of technology and organizational logic within the university's IT governance and its shortcomings in supporting digital transformation. It presents an in-depth analysis of the co-evolution of technological advancements and the organization responsible for technology support and maintenance. The paper traces the transition from the early era, dominated by academic logics, to contemporary IT organizations driven by bureaucratic and internal market logics. It further investigates the preference for specific technological solutions under different organizational logics. Crucially, the paper highlights a misalignment between the traditional logic of IT organizations and the demands of digital transformation, demonstrating that conventional IT approaches and logics are insufficient for addressing the challenges of digital transformation., Part of ISBN 978-1-890843-45-8QC 20240906

This study examines the role of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in digital transformation within Swedish Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) amidst the fourth industrial revolution. Despite significant technological advances, the educational sector continues to rely on traditional methodologies and has not fully integrated digital technologies. Through a survey conducted among Swedish higher education CIOs, the research identifies a substantial variation in the understanding and implementation of digitalization, with 70% of institutions lacking a unified definition and only 40% having established digitalization plans. The results underscore that digital technologies are primarily utilized to improve administrative efficiency, often neglecting their potential to enhance educational and research outcomes. Moreover, the involvement of CIOs in strategic decision-making is inconsistent, which highlights the need for a reevaluation of their role to bolster their influence on policy and strategic planning. The paper advocates for a redefinition of the CIO’s role and calls for ongoing collaboration to develop effective digitalization strategies in higher education.

The nature of designing and developing new products and services inherently means having todeal with the unknown. This has garnered research attention from many perspectives over the years.Today we know both how to categorize ambiguity and reasons for sustaining or mitigating it. Yet,what practitioners actually do when facing ambiguity is not well understood. For this reason, weintroduce the concept of negotiating ambiguity, meaning to engage in conversation, to makeinterpretations or create meaning, when facing ambiguity. The purpose is to explore how design andnew product development work is made to progress when facing ambiguity. We study this in twocases: one of service design work and one of product design and development work. Usingobservations and semi-structured interviews, three contributions are derived from the material. First,we show that negotiating ambiguity does not stand apart from the ongoing design and developmentwork. Secondly, we portray 14 activities for negotiating ambiguity. Thirdly, the activities arecategorized into four strategies for negotiating ambiguity, namely: constructing points of reference,mediating between perspectives, anchoring in expertise, and visualizing the future. By leveraginginsights from the paper, managers can strengthen how ambiguity is negotiated in theirorganizations, for instance by recognizing the skill of negotiating ambiguity when recruiting andtraining employees., QC 20240627

This research explores the challenges of adopting agile methods in multifunctional productdevelopment, studying the R&D division in a large international company. Using a qualitative method,we seek to understand how stakeholders experience and undertake this ongoing change. Over a 14-month period, in-depth interviews and meetings with managers from various units were conducted. Our findings highlight the multifaceted challenges encountered in the transition towards agilemethodologies. Key barriers include organizational antagonism, lack of role models, establishingcross-organizational coordination, receiver capacity, and classic change management problems. Ourstudy underscores the need for nuanced managerial strategies to navigate these obstacles effectively.From formalizing new routines to acknowledging external constraints, managers must anticipate andaddress various challenges to ensure successful agile transformations. The study adds to the current understanding of agile methodologies as new form of organizing R&D ina multifunctional product development setting. We offer insights into the stepwise adoption of agilepractices in multifunctional product development, making three key contributions: (1) identifyingobstacles in adopting agile methods, (2) suggesting areas for future research, and (3) providingpractical advice for managers overseeing multifunctional R&D projects., QC 20240627

This study focuses on the progression between courses in a programme, meaning that thelearning experiences build upon and reinforce the previous ones. The idea of mutuallysupporting courses is a cornerstone of the integrated curriculum, and hence of the CDIOapproach. However, despite much use of the term, there is a lack of work to conceptualiseprogression. The aim of this paper is, accordingly, to provide a richer theoreticalconceptualisation of progression and to apply this in analysing the implementation in aprogramme. In this case, we focus specifically on the progression through a series of coursesbased on authentic engineering projects. Such courses, called Design-implementExperiences, are a prominent feature of the CDIO framework; Standard 5 recommends at leasttwo project courses with progression through the curriculum. The context for the study is the5-year Electrical Engineering programme at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. It contains aseries of yearly project courses starting in the first year and ending with the master thesisproject. The purpose is to support students to synthesise and consolidate their learning inprevious and parallel subject courses, and to develop professional engineering skills. Here,the progression between the three first project courses is described with detailed elaborationof three themes: communication, project planning and management, and ethics. The questionsguiding our investigation are: What is the nature of progression across these project courses?In particular, along what dimensions is progression planned, and how is that implemented inthe course design?, QC 20231113

Organizations' strategic change projects and programs involving the implementation of IT services have interested project scholars. Yet, we still know little of how public sector universities, for example, adapt to the ongoing digital transformation and the challenges they face when aiming to transform their operations into a digital one. To address this issue, we conduct in-depth fieldwork to examine the activities that make up the establishment of the Digital University. Focusing on a leading technological university in Sweden that is undergoing digital transformation, the purpose of the case study was exploratory, i.e., to gain experience and an understanding – to raise issues for further research on the organizational challenges a university faces when undergoing digital transformation. To this end, the focus of the study was to delve into how digitalization efforts were managed and organized and if and when a more strategic approach was adopted. Our findings highlight that the university's need to quickly adapt and remain relevant based on new technical opportunities, as well as appoint competent staff, was the driving force behind the implementation of IT services. Based on our findings, we can conclude that some extensive challenges arise due to the actual change process and several organizational challenges because the digital transformation is skewed towards increasing efficiency rather than the adoption of more strategic innovation practices., QC 20231113

This paper challenges the view that ambiguity is undesirable. Doing so enables us to break free from a long tradition of approaching ambiguity as a hindrance to be avoided or reduced. In this paper, an alternative view is presented that shows that the very essence of creativity and innovation in design and new product development (NPD) work revolves around ambiguity. A practice perspective is adopted to empirically and qualitatively study the ongoing design and NPD work in observations and interviews. In contrast to the design and NPD literature’s emphasis on reducing ambiguity as a fundamental prerequisite for finalizing projects, the present article demonstrates that the emergence of ambiguity is a prerequisite for undertaking design and NPD work: ambiguity creates room for maneuver in-between the multiple or vague interpretations. The contribution thus shows how ambiguity continuously opens up a space for action wherein new interpretations may emerge with regards to the design outcome, its intended market and the process for its creation., QC 20231120

The agile paradigm is winning ground, and many large-scale industrial companies are now followingthe trend to transition into agile ways of organizing their (development) work. In doing so, theorganization not only needs to manage the change itself, but also the new way of working and theorganizational consequences from the change. Research in the field has kept pace, there are bothstudied success stories and identified challenges with undergoing agile transformations. However,the long-term organizational consequences of agile transformations and what makes thetransformation sustainable and lasting over time are shrouded in mystery: is it a good or bad dream?, QC 20231120

QC 20230830

The digital transformation of society is ubiquitous, and even well-established educational institutions are affected. Universities need to adapt to the ongoing digital transformation, both to stay relevant but also to prosper. Yet, many public sector universities face obstacles when aiming to transform their business into a digital one, and this calls for research into the strategic organizational elements and related factors that hinder or aid the process. Drawing from an in-depth case study, it analyses data collected via a survey and multiple interviews to explore the organizational challenges a university faces when starting to adapt to digital transformation. The study shows that an organization's collective understanding of its business logics is a prerequisite to advancing digital transformation. The study of a university also shows that the digital transformation focus is skewed towards increasing efficiency rather than the innovation of new practices., QC 20230814

The front-end customer–supplier collaborative creation processes are attracting increasing interest from project scholars. We still know little of these processes, however, which are increasingly being digitalized. Drawing from a qualitative case study of customer–supplier knowledge collaboration (KC) at the front-end phase of oil and gas projects in Norway, we explore why collaborative actors struggle to achieve KC openness in the digital age. We develop a model displaying how the fragmented ambient awareness networks and the coexisting collaborative and digital logics exacerbate the subjectivity of the project actors, giving rise to sharing–protection tensions. We offer novel insights for project management and interorganizational relations literature by showing how logic complexity challenges the project organizations’ inherent efforts to achieve open, digitally driven KC at the projects’ front end. Our results also suggest that logic complexity and double talk around KC showcase a hypocritic organizational response to the enduring openness challenge in customer–supplier project relations in the digital age.

Before the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, work and education on the university campus were considered superior to equivalent activities conducted digitally or remotely. Despite being significantly digitally mature, many organizations did not consider or even permit digital or hybrid participation in meetings and education. In March 2020, the lockdown following the pandemic caused the transition of many organizations and most universities to online-only operation in record time. Often, this occurred while maintaining quality and production, even if some aspects relating to the user experience were lost. The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze how digitalization following the pandemic influenced and transformed the digital work environment in higher education. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, provided the experiences and data for this article. In conclusion we distinguished different phases of digital work and education before, during and after the pandemic: 1. The Pre-Pandemic Phase, 2. The Emergency Remote Phase, 3. The New Normal, 4. The Slow Acceptance Phase, and 5. The Dividing Phase, or what we refer to as The 'New' New Normal. In this phase it looks like it will be a battle between three perspectives; those who are looking to get back to the pre-pandemic conditions, those living in The New Normal, and those actively analyzing the lessons learned and aiming for The Thoughtful Blended Phase. Analyzing these five phases we discern that the implications for the future will be heavily dependent on the following aspects: management commitment and support; well-functioning technology and support organization; understanding the effects digitalization will have on culture, organization and well-being; increasing interest in participating in pedagogical development; new designs needed for hybrid work and education; the need to rethink structure and contents of meetings; and paying extra care and attention to the psychological well-being, QC 20230921

The Swedish consumer market for auto insurance is in a process of transformation from traditional insurance to usage-based insurance (UBI) based on telematics. The Swedish market can be characterized as having a high level of diffusion and use of digital technologies, yet while auto UBI is well established on several markets internationally it has been struggling on the Swedish. An exploratory case study has been performed covering actors in the Swedish eco system around UBI: incumbent insurance companies, challengers, and technology providers. Interviews have been carried out with key employees and decision makers to understand which opportunities and challenges they perceive in areas ranging from technology to market and how these influence decisions to engage or not to engage in such innovations. The results indicate among other things that national characteristics influence the establishment of auto UBI; the expected technological development creates a window of opportunity preventing incumbents from engaging; the slowly increasing market penetration by UBI offered by challengers will eventually force incumbents to react; although sales of a UBI service is generally not considered profitable for an incumbent they consider or apply different strategies for self-disruption., QC 20200428

Large investments are made annually to develop and maintain IT systems. Successful outcome of IT projects is therefore crucial for the economy. Yet, many IT projects fail completely or are delayed or over budget, or they end up with less functionality than planned. This article describes a Bayesian decision-support model. The model is based on expert elicited data from 51 experts. Using this model, the effect management decisions have upon projects can be estimated beforehand, thus providing decision support for the improvement of IT project performance., QC 20140131. Updated from accepted to published.

As a result of the organisational evolvement towards increased structure in product development (PD), supporting concepts like Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) have arisen. DFSS provides structuring guidelines as well as suggestions regarding tool and technique implementations for PD. Companies’ need for support and structure from such a concept does, however, not always correspond to the real content of the concept. This article examines the DFSS implementation strategy in four organisations to determine which parts of the DFSS concept are being used by companies. Results show that several of the most difficult activities in PD lack concrete support in DFSS. On the other hand, many of the clearly described actions of the concept are already well-operating methods in today's product developing organisations., QC 20140925

This article discusses experiences from case studies conducted at product developing departments in four multinational companies. All organizations are outstanding product developing companies with a long and successful historical background within product development. Therefore it is interesting to understand how these companies deal with risks in their product development processes. The aim of the paper is to find out if the Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) concept supports the need of industrial companies to deal with risks in their product development projects. The results show that DFSS promotes the company needs to some extent. There is a great method support in DFSS regarding how to consider technical risks. On the other hand, all companies included in this study would need more support to highlight the holistic perspective concerning cross functional collaborations, increased communication and avoiding sub-optimizations in development project, a requirement that is not sufficiently supported., QC 20150223

This paper presents a case study that evaluates the performance of the product development performance measurement system used in a Swedish company that is a part of a global corporate group. The study is based on internal documentation and eighteen indepth interviews with stakeholders involved in the product development process. The results from the case study include a description of what metrics that are in use, how these are employed, and its effect on the quality of the performance measurement system. Especially, the importance of having a well-defined process proved to have a major impact on the quality of the performance measurement system in this particular case., QC 20121219

There is a lack of definitions of clear quality measurements within existing product development literature. Several literature sources that mention measurements in product development base their attitude on the triple constraints division into time, costs and functionality/quality. This article summarizes proposed literature definitions of what to include within quality measurements in product development. The article also proposes a statement of different existing viewpoints of quality measurements within some organization’s development process., QC 20140918

All product-developing organizations strive with challenges regarding how to organize and structure their development projects. Faster market changes, increased number of competitors, ambivalent customers, new regulations and standards have made product development become more complex. Due to these challenges organizations need to focus on product development to be able to stay competitive in the market. Therefor several concepts fostering improvement in product development organizations have been developed during the last decades. One such concept is Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) aiming to improve and structure development processes and their included activities. The concept is still considered as new and until today based on a complex structure. This article introduces a pedagogical way to structure the DFSS concept simplifying organizational implementations and benchmarking of the concept. Also remaining gaps in the concept and hypotheses regarding how to counter these gaps are presented in the article., QC 20121214

QC 20150209

In this paper, we describe the ideas behind a second-year Design-Build course in Electrical Engineering. Electrical Engineering is a theoretical subject, and in such it is difficult to maintain the theoretical level in project courses introduced too early in the program, especially when core subjects like electromagnetic field theory are involved. This issue is addressed and we also describe our approach for the assessment of the students. We also discuss the different goals that were set up prior to the course from a program perspective; how we reasoned when designing the course, the assessment structure, and the output once the course was implemented, QC 20150417

Many companies that have been working success- fully withLeanfor some years are now implementingLeanProduct Development,LPD. Even though much has been written about theLPDconcept,amain body of theLPDliterature is promoting the concept without objections. Accordingly, criticism towardsLPDtends to be undividedly negative to the concept. The contribution of the present study is twofold. First, it summarizes previous research about theLPDconcept inamodelin accordance with Enterprise Architecture terminology. This section also includesastructured breakdown of tools mentioned inLPDliterature. Second, the paper discusses both advantages and disadvantages with the concept, aiming to present an unfeigned picture ofLPD, using examples from Swedish industries. Thereby, the study clarifies which expectations thatacompany starting to implementLPDreasonably can have on the concept., QC 20120202

Large investments are made annually for development and maintenance ofITsystems, systems that support the core business of all types of companies and organizations. Successful outcome ofITprojectsis therefore a crucial issue for the economy at large, yet a majority of theITprojectscarried out today fail whenitcomes to finishing on time, within budget and with the desired quality. The contribution of this paper is theexperiencefrom 28ITprojects. The influence ofITprojectsuccessfactors, derived from previous research, were assessed by theprojectmanagers and compared with theprojectsoutcome in terms of time, budget and quality. Though the dataset is too small to allow generalization, thesuccessfactorsRisk analysis, User involvement and Top management support turned out to be of particular importance for the reviewedprojects., QC 20120202

Many companies of today use development concepts like Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) to structure and improve their development processes. An important part of the DFSS concept is the role structure and the role of the Black Belt in particular. That the DFSS Black Belts are given sufficient help to meet the high expectations of the role is therefore of crucial importance for the success of a DFSS initiative. When implementing DFSS in an organization, a training investment related to the role structure is recommended by literature. Little is however said about how this training should be carried out in practice. Interviews on a multinational Swedish organization recognized for its extensive DFSS and Six Sigma program shows that some requirements on DFSS Black Belt competences are not covered by existing literature or by the official descriptions of DFSS Black Belt certification requirements. The purpose of the article is to investigate the gap between what companies whish their DFSS Black Belts to know and what support research and DFSS training companies can offer in this matter. The paper also provides a competence profile for a DFSS Black Belt. The competence profile summarizes recommended knowledge for a DFSS Black Belt derived from literature, DFSS certification companies and practical experience from the case study company., QC 20120215

QC 20120329

QC 20120411

QC 20120411

Images such as Gantt, WBS, PERT, and CPM have always played important roles in project management. In recent years, new types of images, such as the system anatomy, have emerged in complex development projects. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate why the alternative images seem to be more useful than the traditional ones during turbulent and complex circumstances. In conclusion we find that the alternative images are focused on integration activities and critical dependencies in the project. Typically, they emphasize common understanding and comprehensibility over formalism and rigor. In addition, these alternative images seem to be resonant with how our cognitive apparatus conceives coordination, thus making them more apt for managing complex development tasks.

When projects are sold with fixed prices, it is utterly important to quickly and accurately estimate the effort required to enable an optimal bidding. This paper desccribes a study performed at a leading IT provider within the electric utility industry, with the purpose of improving the ability to early produce effort estimates of projects where standard functionality is delivered. In absence reliable historic data, an estimation model suitable for incorporating expert estimates was developed. The model is based on decomposition of projects and bottom-up estimation of them, where impact of relevant variables is estimated by assessing discrete scenarios. In addition to a estimating the expected effort of a project the uncertainty of provided estimates are visualised. Together with the transparency of the model this makes it possible to analyse and refine the estimates as more details of a project are known., QC 20120213

In product development, there is a need for quality focused structures that enable connections between the development divvision and other departments within the company. During the last decade, several concepts for product development have arisen. Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) and Lean Product Development (LPD) are now the most well known quality focused concepts for product development. Even though DFSS and LPD share the same objectives, they are most often regarded independent from each other and most companies chose to work with only one of the concepts. This paper compares and analyzes DFSS and LPD in order to investigate if and how the concepts could be integrated with each other. A widened scope and an objective evaluation of both concepts are ensured by using a general project management approach. The analysis of DFSS and LPD is based on the fulfillment of the ten project management success factors as provided by the Standish Group in their of the cited Chaos report. Based on the analysis, this study concludes that an integration of DFSS and LPD is both possible and beneficial. Together, they meet the requirements of the success factors to a much larger extent than what would be the case for a single concept. From the perspective of The Standish Group a combination of DFSS and LPD generates an almost perfect and complete concept for product development. This paper presents a proposal of how to integrate DFSS and LPD combining parts from the LPD philosophy with concrete tools and structures from DFSS for maximal success., QC 20120329

Today, engineering and other technology intense businesses are increasingly carried out in project form. This allows better use of scarce resources, a simplified decision-making process as well as specific organization forms being tailored to the task at hand. However, despite these advantages, complex industrial projects often fail in the sense that budgets, time-frames and customer requirements are not met. Organizations also spend lots of money on introducing project models and certifying their project managers. Are these actions really efficient, i.e. do they lead to improved management of projects? The aim of this article is to describe the impact of (i) use of project model, (ii) project manager certification, and (iii) size of organization on ( a) employment of risk analysis, (b) existence of project sponsor, ( c) existence of steering committee, and (d) existence of project manager task description, respectively. This paper presents correlations derived from N=59 semi-structured interviews with project managers of technology centered projects from several countries. Two statistically significant relations were found through a correlation analysis: between the use of a project models and the existence of steering committee and between the use of a project model and the existence of a project manager task description., QC 20110407

Each year companies spend millions of dollars on IT investments hoping they will lead to higher profits. There are many methods for analyzing what these investments actually bring back to the companies, but unfortunately they are not stringent enough to make the analysis repeatable. This means that different investments cannot be compared to each other. The management paradigm of Enterprise Architecture (EA) is commonly used to structure a company from a holistic perspective. In this paper, an EA framework for assessing IT-systems' impact on an organization's business value through changes in its structure is validated. The foundation of the framework is a Bayesian inference engine allowing quantified analysis. For practical usage, this analysis framework is also expressed through modeling the organization with a metamodel. Together they form a structured method for quantitative analysis of the IT impact on organizations. An IT system for maintenance management within a European electric power utility has been used as a case study to validate the method. The organization and IT support have been modeled using the proposed metamodel and thereafter analyzed with the Bayesian network. The study has been conducted using guided interviews and a survey. The results from this study of how the business value has been influenced are compared to the user's perceptions on how the business values have changed are also presented in this paper., QC 20110222

QC 20120425