Challenges of cross-organizational team in agile project management

Abstract

The growing popularity of agile approach to project management is documented and studied by a variety of researchers. However, the current research does not cover in many details the challenges of applying agile project management in cross-organizational teams. Therefore, this study aims to examine the challenges, which are faced in agile teams, from the perspective of one organizational group by studying the challenges from two perspectives (nexuses). Firstly, I study the cross-organizational team relationships focusing on the agile team (products team) and explore the relationships with the other organizational agile team (cross-organizational team nexus). Secondly, I study the intra-organizational team relationships of product team and its respective organization from change management perspective.

Research was conducted using a case study approach with two case studies represented by two teams, which were both part of the same organization and have external vendors and adhere to agile ways of project management. Cross-case analysis showed that all challenges faced by these teams could be aggregated in three core dimensions: change ambiguity, preserving the credibility of the change effort and agile capabilities. This study discusses the dependency between each nexus and how they relate to the challenges faced by the cross-organizational team. Additionally, this thesis contributes to the existing theory by providing a novel view on relationships within the agile team.