scaling up customer project management - kth .diva

DEGREE PROJECT IN THE FIELD TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT AND THE MAIN FIELD OF STUDY SECOND CYCLE, 30 CREDITS STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN 2021

Scaling Up Customer Project

Management: The role of

customisation

CLARA BUBENKO

MELKER OLOFSSON

KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT www.kth.se

Scaling Up Customer Project Management: The Role of Customisation

by

Clara Bubenko Melker Olofsson

Master of Science Thesis TRITA-ITM-EX 2021:129

KTH Industrial Engineering and Management

Industrial Management

SE-100 44 STOCKHOLM

Scaling Up Customer Project Management: The Role of Customisation

Clara Bubenko Melker Olofsson

Examensarbete TRITA-ITM-EX 2021:129

KTH Industriell teknik och management

Industriell ekonomi och organisation

SE-100 44 STOCKHOLM

Master of Science Thesis TRITA-ITM-EX 2021:129

Scaling Up Customer Project Management: The role of customisation

Clara Bubenko

Melker Olofsson

Approved

2021-06-11

Examiner

Luca Urciuoli

Supervisor

Jannis Angelis

Commissioner

Northvolt AB

Contact person

Peter Olofsson

Abstract

Many organisations aim to grow and increase their profitability, yet not many start-ups manage

to survive beyond birth. The transformation into a well-established enterprise is generally seen as

a big obstacle to tackle. Further on, project based organisations faces several challenges during

scale-up such as how to maintain customisation within customer projects and how to keep up a

cross-functional integration.

This thesis addresses how a start-up manufacturing enterprise can scale-up its customer project

management. Accordingly, the aim of this thesis is to get a better understanding of the difference

between a start-up and an incumbent enterprise, and in turn highlight how to maintain

customised operations in a project based organisation. The basis for this thesis is a case study

conducted at Northvolt, a lithium-ion battery manufacturing enterprise located in Sweden. The

outcome was performed through a collaboration with Northvolt’s customer project management

department, and an analysis of conducted best-practice interviews together with a literature

review. The empirical findings can be summarised in the following:

• First, a growing enterprise needs to implement industry quality standards through the

identification of standardised modules. Likewise, an enterprise needs to find which layers

to keep flexible and create an environment that enables customisation.

• Second, the dynamics within organisational structures can be illustrated as a cradle

moving back and forth. An external platform enables new product development.

• Third, cross-functional integration is identified as a corner stone for scale-up, but also

vital to maintain new product development and hence customisation.

• Fourth, pushing down the ownership together with clear targets and milestones is crucial

to facilitate a mindset that motivates the workforce in growing sustainable. At the end,

this thesis provides Northvolt with some key aspects to have in mind while scaling-up

their customer project management, and highlights the conceptual contribution.

At the end, this study provides Northvolt with some key aspects to have in mind while scaling-up

their customer project management, and highlights the theoretical contribution.

Keywords: Project management, Customer project management, Scale-up, Customisation,

Standardisation.

Examensarbete TRITA-ITM-EX 2021:129

Scaling Up Customer Project Management: The role of customisation

Clara Bubenko

Melker Olofsson

Godkänt

2021-06-11

Examinator

Luca Urciuoli

Handledare

Jannis Angelis

Uppdragsgivare

Northvolt AB

Kontaktperson

Peter Olofsson

Sammanfattning

En strävan efter uppskalning är vanligt förekommande för företag inom tillverkningsindustrin.

Däremot är det inte en självklarhet att transformera ett start-up till ett väletablerat företag. Att

omstrukturera verksamheten till en framstående och välfungerande organisation uppfattas i regel

som en svår uppgift. Projektbaserade organisationer möter allt som oftast flera utmaningar under

uppskalning, sa som att bibehålla kundanpassning inom kundprojekt samt att den tvärfunktionell

kommunikationen ofta blir lidande.

Den har uppsatsen adresserar huruvida ett tillverkningsföretag, som befinner sig inom start-up

stadiet, kan skala upp sin kundprojektavdelning. Därmed syftar denna uppsats till är att ge en

ökad förståelse av vad som skiljer ett start-up från ett väletablerat företag, samt identifiera

huruvida det går att bibehålla kundanpassning inom ˚ vaxande projektbaserade organisationer.

Grunden till denna uppsats är en fallstudie genomförd tillsammans med Northvolt, ett

batteritillverkande företag baserat i Sverige. Resultatet är baserat på best-practice intervjuer samt

en litteraturstudie, varav analysen ar utförd i samarbete med Nortvhvolts kundprojekt avdelning.

Det empiriska resultatet kan kort sammanfattas enligt:

• För det första, ett växande företag behöver implementera branschspecifika

kvalitetsstandarder genom att identifiera vad ¨ som kan standardiseras. Likaså behöver ett

företag specificera vilka delar som kan hållas flexibla för kundanpassning.

• För det andra, en organisation pendlar allt som oftast mellan olika strukturer. Genom att

skapa en extern plattform kan ett företag generera produktutveckling i allt högre grad.

• För det tredje, tvärfunktionell kommunikation är en grundsten för uppskalning, men även

en nyckel för att generera produktutveckling och därmed kundanpassning.

• För det fjärde, att trycka ansvaret längre ner i hierarkin tillsammans med att

implementera tydliga mål och hållpunkter utgör en grund för att ge arbetskraften den

motivation som krävs för att växa hållbart.

Till sist bidrar denna uppsats med några applicerbara verktyg som Northvolt kan ta tillhanda för

att skala upp deras kundprojekt avdelning, och slutligen en redovisning av det konceptuella

bidraget inom uppskalning av projektbaserade organisationer.

Nyckelord: Project management, Customer project management, Scale-up, Customisation,

Standardisation.

CLARA BUBENKO & MELKER OLOFSSON i

Foreword

This paper was produced under the Industrial Engineering and Management department as a Master of Science thesis at theRoyal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. The scope of this thesis was 30 credit, whereat it commenced in the

beginning of January and was finalised in the beginning of June.

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, we would like to thank Peter Olofsson, Automotive project manager at Northvolt, for his prominentsupport and guidance throughout the study. We are also very grateful for Sanna Rue Boson, program manager at Northvolt,for her encouragement and back up. Last but not least, we are very thankful to our supervisor at KTH, Associate professor

Dr. Jannis Angelis, for his contribution.

June 2021, StockholmClara and Melker

CONTENTS

I Introduction 1I-A Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1I-B Problematisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2I-C Purpose and objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2I-D Research questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2I-E Delimitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2I-F Disposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

II Theoretical chapter 3II-A Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

II-A1 New product development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3II-B Project organisation structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

II-B1 Project based organisations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4II-C Project management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

II-C1 Planning and tracking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5II-C2 Risk management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5II-C3 Project alignments and OCR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6II-C4 Change management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

II-D Customer project management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6II-D1 External integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6II-D2 Internal integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7II-D3 Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

II-E Agile project management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8II-E1 Scaled agile framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8II-E2 Scaled agile management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

II-F Scalability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10II-G Chapter summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

III Method 10III-A Research approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10III-B Research process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

III-B1 Literature review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12III-B2 Case study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

III-C Research quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16III-D Chapter summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

IV Analysis 17IV-A Map of the ecosystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17IV-B Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

IV-B1 Start-up to scale-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19IV-B2 Standardisation and customisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20IV-B3 Organisational structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21IV-B4 Internal and external integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

V Discussion 24V-A Start-up to scale-up, the trade-off between standardisation and customisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24V-B The dynamic between organisational structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25V-C Internal and external integration, key for customisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26V-D Reflections on sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

VI Conclusion 27

VII Study contribution 28VII-A Theoretical contribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28VII-B Practical contribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28VII-C Limitations and future research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

CLARA BUBENKO & MELKER OLOFSSON iii

VIII Appendix 34VIII-A Interview Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34VIII-B Internal Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

CLARA BUBENKO & MELKER OLOFSSON iv

LIST OF FIGURES

1 An illustration of a Northvolt facility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 An illustration of the future manufacturing plant in Skelleftea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 An illustration of a Project Based Organisation. (pm4dev, 2016). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 The four categories of scaled agile framework by Bob Hartman (Denning, 2021). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 The position of Scaled Agile Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 This figure presents the five-step model of organisational change by Hong et al. (2019). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 An illustration of the internal data collection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 An illustration of the automotive & foundry department. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 An illustration of the AF organisations levels of communication - structured in hierarchy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1810 This framework illustrates key points for an organisation going from being a start-up to a scale-up. . . . . . . . 2011 This figure illustrates the ”onion” structure; a core with standardised modules with flexible layers to enable

customisation, and on top of this a mindset that generates sustainable growth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

CLARA BUBENKO & MELKER OLOFSSON v

LIST OF TABLES

I This table presents the conducted in-house interviews at Northvolt. Due to secrecy, only the role title is presented. 14II This table presents the conducted best practice interviews. Due to secrecy, only the role title is presented. . . . . 15

CLARA BUBENKO & MELKER OLOFSSON vi

ACRONYMS

NV NorthvoltCPM Customer project management

CI Customer integrationCFI cross-functional integrationCM Change managementPM Project manager

NPD New product developmentIPC Initial product conceptSDG Sustainable development goalA&F Automotive & FoundryPMS Performance measurement systemPP Performance prismKPI Key performance index

SAFe Scaled agile frameworkOCR Objective & key results

CLARA BUBENKO & MELKER OLOFSSON 1

I. INTRODUCTION

This section introduces the reader to the research back-ground and field of investigation. In accordance with thebackground, the field of investigation is problematiased, andfurther on presented through purpose and objective. This isthen contextualised through research questions and delimita-tion.

THE global energy consumption increases continuouslyand, in the recent past, a well-established energy system

has become high on the agenda across the world (Wiggers,2020). The global usage of natural resources is consumed inan unsustainable manner, implementations such as subsidiesof fossil fuels does not support facing climate crisis (News,2019). In 2015, the United Nations (UN) introduced 17 sus-tainable development goals (SDGs) to create a common visionand visible guidelines to support a sustainable foundation inconsideration of environmental, social and ecological aspects(Nations, 2021).

In order to ensure access of affordable, reliable, sustain-able and modern energy, the UN recommends businesses toperform a higher degree of readiness of the area. Also, UNsuggests businesses to identify ”hot spots” in their value chainthat could strengthen its sustainable thinking and improve op-erations in relation to the climate (Nations, 2020a). Having thatsaid, the world is craving more sustainable initiatives, whereatNorthvolt AB, a Swedish lithium-ion battery manufacturingcompany, has joined the wave in transforming the energyindustry in becoming carbon neutral by producing greenerbatteries.

Northvolt’s mission is to produce the world’s greenestbatteries, with a lower carbon footprint, and close the loopof material usage through recycling (Northvolt, 2021a). Inthat sense, the goal is to create benchmarks for sustainablemanufacturing that promotes responsible sourcing and 100%renewable energy. Current manufacturing plants are placed inSweden and Poland. Northvolt has their own demonstrationfactory and research facility (Labs) located in Vasteras, Swe-den, where they develop their battery cells in close collabora-tion with their customers.

Northvolt offers both standardised and customised batterycells to their customers, and targets several markets such asthe automotive, grid, industrial, portable and micro-mobilitymarket. Northvolt’s vision is to expand and transform currentindustry in becoming more sustainable through customisedbattery cells (Northvolt, 2021b).

In the recent past, much literature revolves around or-ganisational growth and its connection to innovation (Corsi,Prencipe, and Capriotti, 2019; Fagiolo, Giachini, and Roven-tini, 2020). Yet, little research seems to have been made withinorganisational growth in consideration of project managementand the role of customisation. Hence, this study aims to fillthis gap in the context of a project based organisation. A rapidgrowth within an enterprise faces several challenges. First,an increased customer base puts a higher pressure on howto manage customer projects and maintain cross-functionalcollaboration. Also, having customised products at a large

scale organisation is more often contradictory, and how tomaintain the role of customisation is to be considered. Inaddition to this, this study sheds light to traits within anincumbent enterprise to enable a better basis for discussion.

Having that said, the theoretical part covers the field ofprojects such as project organisation structure, project basedorganisations, project management, customer project man-agement, agile project management and finally scalability.Together with in-house -and best practice interviews, this isconceptualised and further investigation proposed.

KTHJune, 2021

Fig. 1. An illustration of a Northvolt facility.

A. Background

Northvolt AB was founded in 2016 and has grown into anenterprise with more than 1 200 employees, and above 70nationalities. Target markets are automotive, grid, industrial,portables, whereat Northvolt provides solutions such as strat-egy, cells and battery systems, and smart diagnostics. North-volt is in the course of action transforming the energy industryby establishing a sustainable benchmark in the manufacturingprocess (Northvolt, 2021b). Northvolt’s headquarter is locatedin Stockholm, Sweden. A large scale factory (ETT) is placedin the Northern part of Sweden, Skelleftea, and is expectedto be up running in 2021. This plant will serve Northvolt’smain manufacture of cell assembly, active material, recyclingand auxiliaries. In 2024 the annual capacity is calculated to 32GWh, but is expected to grow up to 40 GWh in the followingyears. This will be solely powered by 100 % clean energy.

The main site for energy storage system assembly andbattery modules is located in Gdansk, Poland, and has beenup running since spring 2019. The last one to be mentioned isthe demonstration factory and research facility (Labs), locatedin the southern part of Sweden, Vasteras. Labs is the startingpoint of battery cell and process development, and in manyways the heart of Northvolt. This site enables the companyto operate in close collaboration and development with itscustomer. Labs qualifies and industrialises battery cells forETT to ramp up on (Northvolt, 2021c).

Northvolt’s main customer is within the automotive market.As aforementioned, the development is located at Labs, wherethe customised battery cells are created as samples. The


automotive customer collaboration is driven by the automotivefoundry (A&F) department. The A&F department is leadthrough a project management, and is currently running fivecustomer projects in parallel. The project teams have their ownfunction engineer at all levels. This enables each team to oper-ate independently of one another, and each functions can sub-optimise its output. The size of this project portfolio enablesthe organisation to maintain a sufficient flow of informationand knowledge between managers and employees. However,Northvolt’s aim is to scale up the organisation, increase itscustomer base, and establish a sustainable benchmark. Thisscale up implies with a larger project portfolio, simultaneouslyas the amount of resources is limited.

Fig. 2. An illustration of the future manufacturing plant in Skelleftea.

B. Problematisation

Northvolt is heading to set a new sustainability benchmarkin the industry. This action implies with an organisational scaleup, an increased customer base, and a larger project portfo-lio. However, former literature about organisational growthis lacking in the field of project management. This studyaims to fill the gap of organisational growth in considerationof customer project management. A rapid growth within anenterprise faces several challenges. An increased customerbase puts higher pressure on how to manage customer projectsand collaboration across the organisation. Also, maintainingcustomised products at a large scale organisation is more oftencontradictory. Lastly, how to maintain the role of customisationis to be considered.

C. Purpose and objective

The purpose of this study is to investigate how to scaleup the customer project management at Northvolt AB. Theobjective of this study is to identify what thresholds thatobstruct an organisation in having an increased customer baseand managing several projects in parallel, whilst maintainingcustomised products. Also, this study will consider the aspectof scarce resources. The process of this study will be accom-plished through a theoretical exploration of former studies, incombination with an empirical investigation. Collected datawill be analysed and elaborated.

D. Research questions

Based on the objective, this section presents a main researchquestion and three associated sub-questions. The main ques-tion is addressed by identifying what thresholds that comeswith scale-up in customer project management.

• How to manage Customer Project Management duringrapid scale up?

The sub-questions are to be explored in order to support theoutcome of the main research question. The sub-questionsconcentrate on different thresholds that occurs when scalingup. First sub-question is to gain an overall understanding inhow customer project management is currently managed.

• How is customer project management managed?

Second sub-question is to identify how the exchange of knowl-edge can be processed between projects, and what impacts thismight bring when scaling-up customer project management.

• How is knowledge transferred between projects?

Finally, the last sub-question is to understand how to maintaina customised product whilst scaling up customer projectmanagement.

• How is customer project management customised?

As mentioned above, these sub-questions provide the re-searchers a foundation to explore the main research question,thereby the latter will not be derived.

E. Delimitations

This study was carried out by the means of a case studyinvestigating how to scale-up an enterprise and maintain therole of customisation. The findings are aimed towards thecustomer project management department at the Northvolt.Further on, the case study was conducted under Northvolt’sconfidential policy, in that sense, neither in-house intervieweesat Northvolt or best practice interviewees will be exposed.Moreover, this case study is central to operations and organ-isational structures at Northvolt. Due to time constraints, thisstudy only investigate impacts related to the CPM department,leaving out e.g. how scale-up affects other departments andother correlations. Further on, this study focuses solely onhow scale-up affect customer project management in terms oforganisational structure and customisation.

F. Disposition

This section provides the reader an overall view of whateach paragraph contains and how this thesis is structured.

• Theoretical chapter: In this chapter, the reader is in-troduced to previous literature and theories associated


to the objective. This chapter has a funnel approachstarting with projects and then followed by project or-ganisational structure, project based organisations, projectmanagement, customer project management, agile projectmanagement, and lastly scalability.

• Method: In this chapter, the process used to conductthe investigated topic in order to make it repeatable isdemonstrated. Further on, the validity and reliability arediscussed of the research methodology.

• Analysis: In this chapter, findings correlated to theresearch questions are presented. The first sub-sectionshows an overview of Northvolt’s ecosystem, and thendemonstrates in-house findings related to the objective.The second sub-section delivers findings from best prac-tice interviews. The latter initially describes the differencebetween a start-up and an incumbent enterprise. Then, asthe breaking point of scalability comes down to standard-isation and customisation, this is further on highlighted.Hence, the following topic revolves around organisationalstructure, and lastly, the impact of internal and externalintegration. Whit that, this section creates a foundationfor discussion.

• Discussion: In this chapter, findings from the in-houseand best practice interviews are discussed in relation tothe theoretical background. The aim is to demonstrate thelayout at Northvolt today, and review how the CPM de-partment Northvolt could maintain customisation whilstscaling up.

• Conclusion: In this chapter, the research questions areexplored and conceptualised. Moreover, empirical con-tributions are presented. Finally, limitations and futureresearch are highlighted.

II. THEORETICAL CHAPTER

This section introduces the reader to previous literature andtheories associated to the objective for analysis and discus-sion. Literature associated to the objective concerns areassuch as project based organisations, project management,customer project management, agile project management andscalability. The outcome is then encapsulated in a chaptersummary.

A. Project

Within the literature, Tonnquist (2014) and Campbell(2014) advocates projects to be beneficial within strict result-orientated enterprises. The purpose of the business modelis to enable structured and effective working promoted byresource limited organisations (Tonnquist, 2014; Campbell,2014). Projects are suitable when an organisation wants tocoordinate several departments temporarily, or when combin-ing resources from different organisations (Tonnquist, 2014).A project is lead by a project manager, with the mandate ofguiding its projects independently of the core organisation’soriginal decisions and guidelines. This enables an optimalworkforce (Tonnquist, 2014; Campbell, 2014). Hence, projects

enable a great focus of customisation, as customer commu-nication can be utilized on an individual level. Accordingto Tonnquist (2014), all projects are preliminary designedwith a fixed end date of resolution. The project model iscommonly used in the automotive industry, as the main focuslays in producing and developing new products or functions(Campbell, 2014).

1) New product development: Processes for new productdevelopment (NPD) are defined by activities and proceduresdeveloped when launching new products and services. Ac-cording to Bhuiyan (2011) and Hart (1995) the process ofdeveloping and evolving new products consist of severalsequences of steps. The first step is the initial product concept(IPC) where ideas and solutions are evaluated. Hence, if theIPC passes, the following steps are; development, testing, andmarket launch.

This step-wise sequence could also be seen as an informa-tional gathering or progress ladder (Hart, 1995)). When the de-velopment of a new product progress, so does the managerial-knowledge. This enables the enterprise to comfortably manageinitial decision making and to assess or reassess the productionfor a streamlined NPD and launch. Accordingly, an establishedorganisation has the advantage to overcome risks and resourcesinvested in unsuccessful development in comparison to a start-up. Start-ups normally lacks in former experience and loosesthe know-how (Hart, 1995; Bhuiyan, 2011).

However, NPD differs among industries and enterprises, andmust be adapted to meet an organisation’s actual needs and re-sources (Bhuiyan, 2011; Hart, 1995). Literature of NPD high-lights the importance of continuous change and improvements.NPD is argued to be a key component to maintain competitiveadvantage and business success (Bhuiyan, 2011; Hart, 1995).As a consequence, the number of new products entering themarket increases. Hence, the importance of managing NPDbecomes crucial for an enterprise’s profit performance andexpansion possibilities (Bhuiyan, 2011). However, managingNPD is time consuming and requires a high demand of bothhuman- and financial resources. Hence, more than 50 % ofnew products does not reach the market and those that do has,within its first year of production, a failure rate between 25-45 % (Cooper and Kleinschmidt, 2010; Lantos, Brady, andMcCaskey, 2009). Despite the knowledge of the importanceof a successful NPD, enterprises continue to deliver with thesame failure rate, causing NPD to be seen as confusing andrisky to manage. Align with research, time and money put inNPD increases, and the expectations for a higher rate of returnrises as a consequence.

B. Project organisation structure

The structure within a project organisation is to encour-age new project implementation and activity coordination(pm4dev, 2016; Lister, 2014). The intention is to establish anatmosphere that facilitates collaboration and teamwork amongemployees by a reduced number of overlaps and disruptionsin their daily work (Lister, 2014). Additionally, the choice of


organisational structure used is one of the most crucial initialdecisions to be made by the project management (pm4dev,2016).

There are no best practise for project structures and allprojects are organised in order to accomplish its given workas efficient as possible. However, there are four joint factorsinfluencing a projects chosen organisational structure (Ton-nquist, 2014; Lister, 2014). First, preferences of the projectmanager (PM). Second, the complexity of the project profile.Third, the project teams skills or knowledge. At last, the parententerprise’s organisational culture. The design of structure doalso need to take into consideration of project characteristicsand the PM’s level of authority in the company.

The initial phase of a project is vital for a sufficienttotal outcome (Tonnquist, 2014). Hence, one of the mainobjectives becomes to minimize early uncertainties and missunderstandings. Moreover, the structure is meant to clarifycollaborations and relationships among team members, butalso external partners. The structure together with a map ofthe project’s architectural authorities can be visualized in anorganisational chart (pm4dev, 2016). Hence, a well-establishedorganisational chart becomes essential for a successful project.An organisational chart is designed as a pyramid, illustratingwhere every person is placed based on function and hierarchy.Resources put in top of the chart have more authority thanteam members further down (pm4dev, 2016; Lister, 2014).Relationships are linked based on each team member’s posi-tion. However, the set up and design of a project could beseen as simple, whereat the process of implementation andintegration are complex and time consuming. As the projectstructure is meant to cover all tasks of its life time, the designalso needs to be rigid and flexible at once. Also, the structureis created to support team members and to minimize overlapsand duplication of work. Hence, the project structure shouldprovide the project manager with tools of assistance to ensurethat its members fulfill the project objectives (pm4dev, 2016;Lister, 2014).

According to pm4dev (2016) and Lister (2014), there aretwo factors to keep in mind when developing a projectstructure in order to maximize its effectiveness and outcome;the demand of coordination and the degree of specialisation.

Coordination is necessary to generate homogeneity amongthe project’s various element (pm4dev, 2016; Lister, 2014).This is crucial in order to ensure that all team members agreeon the project’s objectives and work towards a common goal.Development projects are set up by independent functions,building on the need of alignment and integration even further.Thereby, the degree of integration is equivalent to the size andcomplexity of a project. From this, the principal responsibilityof the project manager is to develop strategies that facilitatean organised working model for all resources, componentsand sub-systems. This however, needs to be performed inaccordance to the program’s master plan (Lister, 2014).

The specialisation of the project must be aligned in order tocover all areas of development. All project functions requireunique needs, causing bigger projects with various speciali-sations to have a higher complexity of the project structure.However, while specialisation enables a project to become sub-

optimised, it also generates dissimilarities within the team.Hence, the PM needs to balance the project structure to enablespecialisation and unity (ibid.).

Based on all factors to consider while creating the archi-tectural design for the project’s organisational structure, theproject management’s degree of authority should be seen asmost important (pm4dev, 2016; Lister, 2014). Hence, it be-comes vital to have a well-established communication betweentop- and project management to enable full support downthe hierarchy. Moreover, development organisations are oftenstructured by programs, specialised within a certain depart-ment. In turn, there are three set-ups of program structures,which are based on the projects in-dependency and the projectmanager’s degree of authority (pm4dev, 2016):

• Program-based: The authority of the project manager islimited and do only cover a fixed area of focus.

• Project-based: The project manager has been given fullauthority of its project.

• Matrix-based: A shared responsibility is divided be-tween the program manager and the project manager.

In this thesis, the investigated company’s project managersobtains full responsibility of their project. Thereby this reportwill exclusively investigate the concept of a project basedorganisation.

1) Project based organisations: A project based organi-sation (PBOs) is recognised by the project manager’s com-prehensive authority. Including total mandate of resources,decisions, control and management (pm4dev, 2016; Lister,2014). In this structure, the employees are assigned solely toperform a certain task and report directly to the PM, this isvisualised in Figure 3.

Fig. 3. An illustration of a Project Based Organisation. (pm4dev, 2016).

In order maintain loyalty and trust, the PM remains fullresponsibility of the employee’s performance and career whileassigned to the project (ibid.). The line authority establishedin the working model facilitates strong control and enablesthe project manager to maintain pleasant communication with


all team members. This results with rapid feedback loopsand an efficient workflow. A well-functioned project set-upwith a clear understanding of the project’s objective andgoals, develops a strong loyalty towards the PM and facilitatesmotivation and ownership among the team members (Lister,2014).

Project based organisations are commonly used to man-age large and complex product development. Due to thelarge amount of resources, it is common that large-scaleorganisations develop similar products in parallel (pm4dev,2016; Lister, 2014). However, this is specified as one majordisadvantage of PBO. Further on, the project model tendsto oppose the spread of information and know-how to otherprojects, as team members tend to stick to each other alsoafter the project is completed. Hence, the PBO structure hasdrawbacks when it comes to communication and knowledge-sharing across external functions and projects (pm4dev, 2016;Lister, 2014).

C. Project management

This section develops a foundation to understand the princi-pals of project management. The reader will be guided withinthe concept of project management, starting with the initialphase of planning and tracking. Moreover, the concept ofrisk management together with alignments and activities issorted out. At last, a description of change management andmanaging innovation are presented.

1) Planning and tracking: Planning and tracking are clas-sified as key components for every project and crucial for aproject management to establish early on (Tonnquist, 2014).Project planning starts in an early stage of a project, but isperformed continuously in order to maintain control and act onchanges. To ensure that the project plan is followed, it is in theinterest of the PM to create a suitable tracking tool for followups on deliveries and reviews of status and milestones(ibid.).

Planning is described as essential to enable a streamlinedworking procedure and could be defined as the heart of aprojects life cycle (Globerson and Zwikael, 2002). Projectplanning is performed during the initial phase in every project,and provides the team with information of project goalsand how to reach them. During this phase, the project planis broken down to illustrated requirements and deliverables.Also, the project plan includes a timeline showing the overallmilestones and outcome (ibid.). Moreover, department specificplans are specified in the project plan to support the teamwith guidance from start to end. Additionally, the set of plansprovide the PM with assistance in managing cost, time, risk,quality and change. Project planning is also used to maintaincontrol of deliveries, budget and schedule (ibid.).

In order to increase the transparency within a project, theteam has regular status reports and continuous performancetracking. Projects benefit by having close sub-deliveries toconcertises the projects process and allow for transparency be-tween the team members (Tonnquist, 2016). A well-functionedtracking mechanism facilitates rapid feedback loops which

in turn enable the team to act accordingly (ibid.). The PMis responsible for the outcome of the project and needs tokeep track of the project’s performance to maintain controlover its resources and consumption. Continuous monitoringrequire that the PM has a fixed method for tracking andreporting, in other words, a functioning timeline (Tonnquist,2014). The purpose of the monitoring is to compare the factualoutcome of the project with the initial planning. Hence, thissets the foundation for a status report and enables forecastsfor future events. Milestone reporting is a common methodfor progress tracking in projects, which is a simplified versionof the project’s progress based on its main tasks of accom-plishment(ibid.).

2) Risk management: In general, organisations are affectedby risks in various degrees. Project risk management isperformed in the planning phase to prevent the occurrenceof uncertainties and errors. However, it also applies to theperformance phase in terms of managing circumstances withnegative impact on the project (ibid.).

The aim of risk management is to decrease the number oferrors. The process starts with an identification, followed by anevaluation and mitigation of risks that could have an impactthe project outcome (ibid.). To accomplish an effective riskmanagement, it is essential that the PM has a clear overviewof its project and knows how to identify possible obstacles.According to Emerson (2020), ”Risk management highlightsthe importance of understanding your project’s objectives andpotential threats that could occur to be able to address themfrom the start.” On the other hand, risk management alsoincludes opportunities that could be beneficial for the project’soutcome. Hence this misconception, risks should be seen as apotential event that can have a future impact on the project(ibid.). Despite risk classification, there are different typesof risks connected to certain tasks. These are widely variousdepending on project type and objectives. Categorisation ofrisk factors are plenty, but in accordance with Emerson (ibid.),one could simplify the classification with three main risk types:

• Cost: The cost categorisation corresponds to a projectsfinancial plan and risks that might cause the project toexceed budget. Inaccuracy of initial cost estimations gen-erate unnecessary risks in addition to external economicalfactors that are more difficult to influence.

• Schedule: Schedule risks are connected to unpredictableevents and conflicts caused by an incomplete planningor scheduling. A common issue for scheduling is scopecreep that occur subsequent of the initial planning.;

• Performance: Performance allude to factors that is affectthe project by under performing or an inconsistent pro-duction compared to the project specifications.

Once the project risks are identified and classified, the PMneeds to understand how these events might impact the projectoutcome and what could be done to mitigate their impactEmerson (ibid.). This could be done by alignments and projectactivities.


3) Project alignments and OCR: Within the literature,project alignment is, in an early phase, used to ensure thata project is set up with a joint vision of success (Villachica,Stone, and Endicott, 2004). Moreover, alignment specifieswhat factors that impacts the project’s success-rate, as wellas how they should be measured. It is also about gainingcommitments between team members and stakeholders. With asuccessful alignment, a project is easily maneuvered to avoidconflicts and pitfalls, and ensure that project deliveries arein line with; business objectives, business expectations andbusiness goals(ibid.). Additionally, project alignments, just asplanning and risk management, is performed in the initialphase of a project and is an ongoing procedure. Moreover,project alignment is used within the completion of importantmilestones, and within changes of project resources or person-nel.

Within modern project management, objective and keyresults (OCR) is suitable for an increased alignment and trans-parency between team members within a project. Thereby, thisshould be taken into consideration as it improves the way ofmanaging customer projects (Bianchi, 2016). OCR is a simpleformat for managing goals and milestones and highlightsthe most crucial items of success to enable alignment on adaily basis. The format of OCRs is rather hands on. Themanagement team identifies a certain objective together withseveral key results to measure its progress. The foundationof the framework is concentrated around accountability andtransparency which is equivalent to a project’s success (ibid.).Last, all key results need to be determined and as precise aspossible to diminish any ambiguity (ibid.).

4) Change management: In accordance to what the Greekphilosopher Heraclitus once said, ”Change is the only constantin life”. Within project management, it is of high value topossess the capability to manage change, especially in long-lasting projects. However, many organisations fail in adapting(Vakola, 2013). Cao, Clarke, and Lehaney (2004) highlightsthe significance of change management and emphasises itsimpact for enterprises in having a more favourable positionin comparison to competition. According to Hong et al.(2019), organisational change demands incentives for action,and this is fueled by change drivers such as external threats,competitive pressure, and possibility to grow.

The concept of change management concerns the processof dealing with behavioral and administrative issues withinan organisation. These issues relate to changes in proce-dures, relationships, employee’s works, and so forth. Oncethe need for change is noticed and considered feasible, thethreshold is to encourage employees in reacting favorableto such changes (Jami Pour and Hosseinzadeh, 2020). Ingeneral, organisational change consists of elements that areinterlinked and interacted. However, many organisations failin implementing a successful change management, whereatCao, Clarke, and Lehaney (2004) points out the significancewith special treatment of change and definable elements toovercome this recurring pattern.

Change management is to be considered differently de-pending on what part of the organisation affected. According

to Cao, Clarke, and Lehaney (ibid.), organisational changeneeds to be managed in different ways depending on itssituation and elements. Organisational change can be appliedinto four different types of change; organisational processes,organisational functions, organisational culture, and powerdistribution. Changes in organisational processes concern howto operate internally in order to create an outcome that isof value to the customer. This type of change might requirecross-sectional activities between departments. Organisationalfunctions can be affected in terms of a new structure whichimplies to change to the distribution of control and coordina-tion. Organisational culture implies to traditions, values andhuman behavioral, which affects business practices and socialrules (ibid.). According to (Van De Ven and Poole, 1995),the definition of organisational change is described as ”anempirical observation of difference in form, quality, or stateover time in an organisational entity”.

Kotter’s Eight Step Leading Change Model (2012) createdthe eight step model for leading change. This model concernsplanning, communication, organisational reward systems, in-fluence, organisational behaviour etc. The last step in thismodel is about anchoring change in the culture. This step un-derlines the need of organisational actions to make it feasibleto establish new changes. In that sense, the organisation needsto adapt to new changes(ibid.). Another model for leadingchange was made by Lewin (1947), which contain three steps;unfreeze, change, refreeze. The first step is about convincingothers that this change is necessary. The second step is aboutmaking the change, whilst the third step is about establishingthe change into the organisation and make it permanent (ibid.).

D. Customer project management

Customer project management, just as project manage-ment, treats all aforementioned processes. However, customerprojects are customer delivery-centered, meaning that projectdecisions are made in order to please the customer. Customerprojects are based on customer orders, hence, the life timeof the project is dependent on the final customer delivery.However, deliveries in customer projects tend to end upcomplex (Jansson, 2004). Accordingly, customer developmentprojects are not strictly controlled by initial requirements, butinstead on recurring discussions made on the way (ibid.).Customer projects are meant to be successful for both theoperating company as well as for the customer. Hence, the PMneeds to deliver on short and long-term basis and the projectset up needs to be flexible enough to manage continuouschange (ibid.). In accordance to this, the PM needs to ensurethat urgent agreements are fulfilled and that the developmentis accomplished within the project’s resources. Hence, CPM isabout maintaining the customer pleased on long-term basis tomaintain wealthy relationships and company reputation (ibid.).

1) External integration: External integration is about cre-ating close collaboration with customers and suppliers (Tokerand Pinar, 2019). External integration can be divided intosupplier integration and customer integration (Yeh, Pai, andWu, 2020), yet this study will only focus on the concept of


customer integration. Customer integration is the process ofunderstanding the customer’s needs and preferences, and inturn, create customer value (Kang et al., 2020).

However, in order to adapt and react to external changesand gain competitive advantage, it is argued to continuouslymeasure and examine an enterprise’s performance. This iswidely known as Performance measurement system (PMS). Acommon saying is ”What gets measure get attention” or ”Whatyou measure is what you get” (Cocca and Alberti, 2010). Anestablished goal is proved to bring human motivation and be-haviour, and it determines the level of individual effort (Sungand Kim, 2021). According to, Cocca and Alberti (2010), ”APerformance Measurement System is the set of metrics used toquantify the efficiency and effectiveness of past actions” and“it enables informed decisions to be made and actions to betaken because it quantifies the efficiency and effectiveness ofpast actions through the acquisition, collation, sorting, anal-ysis and interpretation of appropriate data” (ibid.). Alignedwith this, Neely, Adams, and Kennerley (2002) created thePerformance Prism (PP) as a framework to manage long-termsuccess for an organisation in an operating environment withmultiple stakeholders. This framework provides guidelines inhow to design, figure, operate and review the PMS. Thekey learning points are; stakeholder concept, reciprocity ofstakeholder relationships, alignment of strategies, processesand capabilities, measures, communication. The stakeholderconcept highlights the essential part of managing the relation-ships between important actors. The reciprocity of stakeholderrelationships is about the joint value for collaborating. Thealignment of strategies, processes and capabilities implies withthe necessity to have an alignment within the organisationtowards satisfying stakeholders, but also to meet the need andvision of the organisation. When it comes to measures, the keymessage here is to review what is being measured. Accordingto Neely, Adams, and Kennerley (ibid.) an organisation has toquestion itself: ”Do we need it?” and ”Why do we need it?”.The measures has to be updated on a regular basis and alignedwith the organisation. Lastly, communication is about givingthe workforce clarity and consistency. When the managementreinforces new measures, the workforce needs to know whatto prioritise and take action to perform against them. Havingthat said, the breaking point comes down to communicatingwhat to measure, how it makes value to the stakeholders, andencourage the workforce to act in a meaningful way (ibid.).

2) Internal integration: Internal integration is describedas cross-department collaboration and share of informationbetween departments (Yeh, Pai, and Wu, 2020). The purposeof internal integration is to create a process-oriented structurethat enhances the enterprise’s internal information exchange(Toker and Pinar, 2019) and in turn meet the needs of the cus-tomer. A high degree of integration is reached when differentdepartments are mutually connected while using informationsystems that support them in keeping accurate, real-timeinformation update. In that sense, an organisation with highinternal integration becomes more cohesive which allows theorganisation to keep an efficient communication in-between

the departments (Yeh, Pai, and Wu, 2020). Internal integration,sometimes called cross-functional integration (CFI) in theliterature, is the process of reaching department alignmentwithin an enterprise through informal and formal mechanisms(Poberschnigg, Pimenta, and Hilletofth, 2020).

Previous literature defines CFI as an organisational capabil-ity (Kang et al., 2020). The intention of this implementation isto improve internal functions and achieve resilience in order toamend the enterprise’s performance. Cross-functional integra-tion entails information sharing, lower degree of uncertaintiesand misunderstandings. In the concept of cross-functional inte-gration, collaboration has a central role. Collaboration entailsthe ability to achieve agility and flexibility within an organisa-tion (Poberschnigg, Pimenta, and Hilletofth, 2020). Accordingto Kang et al. (2020), CFI enables functional departments toachieve a high level of information and resource sharing. Tokerand Pinar (2019) argues that internal integration generatescollaborative, manageable and synchronised processes throughorganisational strategies, procedures and applications. Also,the degree of CFI goes align with an enterprise’s abilityto absorb external information. The establishment of a highCFI is shown to be effective while integrating customersand suppliers into the process of NPD. In that sense, Kanget al. (2020) argues that a high degree of CFI increases anentperise’s ability to take in new information from externalactors due to its willingness to co-operate (ibid.). In the recentpast, the interplay between enterprises and customers hascome to pass in a traditional manner. This means that theenterprise has been responsible for creating and marketinga product, meanwhile the customer has acted as a passivereceiver that buys the product. However, this has come aboutto change. The traditional interplay between enterprises andcustomers has turned into a more collaborative relationship.The technological change has empowered the customer’sposition in the marketplace, and in turn put emphasis onthe role of customer integration. Customer integration (CI)is about integrating the customer into an enterprise’s valuecreation process. Enterprises can draw benefits of CI in termsof reduced costs and increased productivity. It is argued thatCI supports the value creation process with customisation,increased quality and, differentiation of the final outcome.(Sesselmann, 2016).

Cross-functional integration is shown to have beneficialimpact on NPD, and is described as an enabler for a successfulNPD. In the context of new product development,Kang et al.(2020) argues that coordination and communication are keyelements. Achieving customer satisfaction is considered as oneof the preferred goals of NPD. The process of NPD comeswith uncertainties regarding technology and customer demand.In order to cope with these uncertainties, NPD requires ahigh-level of collaboration and information sharing betweendepartments. In that sense, according to Kang et al. (ibid.),cross-functional integration can help the organisation in re-ducing these uncertainties. Also, the interdependence betweendepartments increase in line with the complexity of NPD. Inthe process of NPD, external knowledge plays an importantrole. Both customer integration and supplier integration areshown to have a beneficial impact on NPD. A successful


NPD requires both internal integration and external integration(Kang et al., 2020).

3) Communication: Within project organisations, commu-nication has a vital role. According to Zhang, J. Chen, andShang (2019), communication is shown to have a positiveimpact on knowledge sharing, co-operation degree and R&Defficiency. Moreover, it is evident that communication hasa central role regarding the degree of co-operation and itsadvancement. In the paper written by Poberschnigg, Pimenta,and Hilletofth (2020), communication is central regardingcross-functional integration and supply chain resilience. Thesignificance of collaboration varies depending on whetherobserving it internally or externally. Internally, collaborationis associated with teamwork, joint effort solving conflicts,joint planning, cross-functional meetings, and information andknowledge sharing between departments. Meanwhile, externalcollaboration focuses on interlinks in the supply chain (ibid.).Moreover, Poberschnigg, Pimenta, and Hilletofth (ibid.) arguesthat the speed in the supply chain corresponds to the internalspeed within the organisation, hence collaboration is a keycapability.

E. Agile project managementThe concept of agile is seen as an iterative approach of tradi-

tional management. Accordingly, agile management separateslarge development processes into sub-deliveries, making theproject flexible. The agile approach facilitates fast feedbackloops and increases an enterprise’s efficiency, and hence itsability to adapt to customer requirements (Gustavsson, 2016).The agile model can be seen as a tool box to deal withcustomer modifications and market dynamics. Additionally,the agile approach facilitates projects to re-evaluate its per-formance in order to ensure that their development keeps upwith industrial requirements (ibid.).

The current marketplace is driven by fast-changing customerneeds, short product life cycles, competing enterprises, andso forth. Hence, an organisation with the ability to generateinnovation and pursue agility is considered having an essentialcapability to maintain competitive advantage (C.-J. Chen,2019; Lee, 2002). Agility in the development and designphase is required in order to meet the demands of the market.However, the management approach affects the speed ofproject development, whereat the agile method is argued toenhance its efficiency (Copola Azenha, Aparecida Reis, andLeme Fleury, 2020). As aforementioned, a dynamic marketrequires enterprises to be responsive in order to managedchange. Based on this, the agile methodology has grown.Additionally, agile methodology orbits around the customerand focuses on customer needs.

Agile management is developed to apply non-linear thinkingwhich makes it highly suitable for complex problem solv-ing (Jurgen Appelo, 2010). According to the Agile AllianceAkkaya (2020), agility is a set of mind, facilitating leadershiprather than management. Within agile management, the focuslays on who you are as a leader instead of what you accomplish(ibid.). Also, agile management is based on ”leadership-collaboration”, facilitating coordination among team members

and employees in order to leverage performance (Hoda, Noble,and Marshall, 2013).

1) Scaled agile framework: There are several agile frame-works applicable for project management, whereat the ScaleAgile Framework (SAFe) is argued to be the most suitable forlarge development organisations (Varma, 2015). The core con-cept of the framework highlights flexibility and the importanceto support each other manage agility in a large context ((ibid.).SAFe is further designed to provide the organisation with anextensive body of knowledge for established best practises,used in precious successful development (ibid.).

Moreover, according to Varma (ibid.), there are four coreconcepts described to be essential in SAFe: (1) Transparency;underlining the importance of close collaboration with teammembers and enabling an open environment. This facilitatesresponsibility and ownership, and encourages the team tocollaborate with a positive set of mind. (2) Program Execu-tion; highlights the impact of contribution and support whichensures that the project’s scope is aligned with its factual out-come. (3) Alignment; provides the team with joint guidelinesand objectives, establish a pleasant model for coordination ofdependencies. It also encourage follow-ups by regular reviewsand alignments. (4) Quality; underlines to take ownership ofwork and reflect on mistakes to maintain a high-end qualityof deliveries and regular work-flow. With these concepts inmind, the PM must communicate core values to its team andemphasise the importance of their practises.

Previously, agile framework is solely considered suitablefor software development. However, this has come about tochange. The agile framework is today used in a broaderperspective. Thus, agile in large organisations comes withseveral challenges. From here on this study will use theterm ’organisation’ for hardware organisations. The main issuecomes down to the communication perspective, as large-scale affects cross-functional collaboration(Dyba and Ding-soyr, 2009). Hence, large-scale organisations require a morecomplex structure. This affects the organisation both internallywithin project teams, but also externally towards customersand suppliers.

Further, scaled agile models can by sorted into foursub-categories: Product, Platform, Horizontal and Verti-cal(Denning, 2021). This is illustrated in Figure 4 downbelow. The product category implies with applying the agileframework to several projects in parallel, whereat the projectscollaborate towards a joint outcome. In contrary, the platformcategory entail each project working individually, but with ajoint solution in mind. Furthermore, the remaining categories,horizontal and vertical, focus on the spread of the agile mindsetin the enterprise’s organisational structure. The vertical cate-gory is about distributing the agile approach at all levels withinan organisation, whereat the horizontal focuses on functionaldepartments (ibid.).

2) Scaled agile management: Within scaled agile manage-ment, project are meant to function autonomous, meaning thatthe teams are self-organised and works individually (Denning,


Fig. 4. The four categories of scaled agile framework by Bob Hartman (Denning, 2021).

2021). The approach follows the agile mindset in general, butscrum in particular. Scaled agile management is described as abridge between the traditional top-down and agile management(Varma, 2015) see Figure 5. This maintains some sub-optimalthinking from the traditional approach but put into the contextof agile.

Fig. 5. The position of Scaled Agile Management

Scaled agile management aims to increase responsibilityfurther down in the hierarchy. Hence, the role of the PMbecomes rather coaching than leading. Medinilla (2012) arguesthat a traditional line manager risk to become redundant inan agile setting. However, this is not necessarily the case inhardware development, and the practise is yet to be proven inlarge settings (ibid.).

Within the literature, there are five general responsibilitiesthat an agile manger should practice regardless of industryor organisation. First, the agile manager should focus onbringing the team motivation. Second, create a structure thatallows the team to work self-organised, and ensure that the

team is aligned with the organisation’s purpose and objectives.Also, the structure should have a design that facilitates agilemethodology, which is the third practice. Fourth, establisha system that assign resources that fits the agile approach.The last practice implies with creating a culture that fostersthe workforce working self-propelled (Medinilla, 2012; JurgenAppelo, 2010).

Furthermore, Maximini (2015) pinpoints other aspects thatseparates traditional and agile. Within traditional management,the project manager is responsible for the project team.However, the agile manager is responsible for the individ-ual. According to Maximini (ibid.), continuous feedback forindividual growth is essential to practise as an agile PM.Maximini (ibid.) continuing by referring to the research byGloger and Hausling (2011), who states that feedback is bestprecised on a weekly basis. Moreover, Gloger and Hausling(2011) and Maximini (2015), underline that the PM shouldfocus on strategies overall, and push down the ownership.Additionally, self-organised teams enables management tofocus on leadership and the organisation overall. However,large-scaled agile management generates several challenges,and requires a radical change of mindset within the teams(Rigby, Elk, and Berez, 2020). According to Rigby, Elk, andBerez (ibid.), this latter is not a quick fix, as the PMs tendto feel confused and excluded. Hence, it becomes crucial toclearly state the management role in the agile context.


F. Scalability

First and foremost, a clear definition of a scale-up seemsto be missing in the literature (Monteiro, 2019; Vaughan-Lee et al., 2018; M.Barker, Reid, and W.Schall, 2016). Inthis thesis, a scale-up goes align with an incumbent, well-established enterprise. The main focus is about shedding lightto growth in the eye of customisation and standardisation. Thepossibility for growth is in many cases desirable. Yet, accord-ing to (Hong et al., 2019), the process of growth is associatedwith distinguished implications. One implication is to maintainfocus of key projects simultaneously as operating with CFI andstandardisation of industrial quality. CFI is defined as a systemwith the purpose to align departments within an organisationto enhance collaboration and knowledge sharing. Further on,Hong et al. (ibid.) mentions the complexity in maintainingcontinuous product development while reaching economies ofscale.

An organisation goes through different transitional pro-cesses, similar to individuals, such as birth, growth and ma-turity. In this context, Hong et al. (ibid.) presented a five-step model for organisational growth; start-up, competition,growth, expansion and prominence, as can be seen in Figure6. However, it is shown that the majority of start-ups do notmanage to survive beyond birth. As an organisation growsand the number of customer increases, it becomes vital toimplement industry quality standards in order to maintaincompetitive advantage. It is emphasised that product devel-opment is a corner stone to stay in the front edge. In thatsense, an organisation needs to involve external knowledgeand move beyond its own capabilities, and simultaneouslyextract internal competence in a sufficient manner. Referringto the latter, complex problem solving is today normallyaddressed by having cross-functional teams. However, the five-step model describes a pathway for organisational growth, butit is also emphasised that an organisation might benefit stayingin a certain stage (ibid.).

G. Chapter summary

Project based organisations generate collaboration betweenemployees which reduces overlaps and increases its overallefficiency. Literature within customer project managementis lacking, however it is similar to the traditional projectmanagement, but with a focus on the customer and customerrequirements. Accordingly, customer projects have a flexibleset up, which allows the organisation to manage marketdynamics and shifting customer needs. In that sense, internalintegration such as CFI is a key component within customerprojects. Also, its a clear synergy between internal and externalintegration. A high internal integration facilitates externalintegration such as customer integration.

In the recent past, the agile methodology is known to behighly suitable to manage speed and change. However, thisapproach is commonly used within software organisations, andnot equally known within hardware development. A frame-work relevant to this topic is SAFe. SAFe can be describedas the bridge between traditional and agile management, andunderlines the importance of self-oriented teams.

As aforementioned, CFI is central within customer projects,but it is also a key component for an organisation to movebeyond birth. A clear definition of a scale-up seems to bemissing in the literature, but the importance of setting industryquality benchmarks is emphasised.

III. METHOD

This chapter explains the method used to conduct the inves-tigated topic, starting by presenting the research’s approach.Second, an illustration of the report’s method used within theresearch process is presented. Moreover, the research caseand objective are further explained and presented in detail.Last, this chapter discuss and motivate the chosen framework’sreliability and validity (Gibbert, Ruigrok, and Wicki, 2008).To enable transparency and present a generic methodology ofwhich is easy to recreate, this section will not refer to theresearch company with its real name and will instead call itby the name of ”the case company”.

A. Research approach

This study’s research objective is meant to explore a poten-tial solution for a given problem. Accordingly, this is statedas one of the most typical objectives to investigate (Collis andHussey, 2013). In particular, this study investigates thresholdsthat occurs when scaling customer project management. Fur-ther, the research aims to map how parallel projects with scarceresources can be managed, whilst focusing on close customercollaborations. This thesis dives further into how the casecompany’s CPM portfolio is managed, how it is customisedand how communication is transported across the organisation.

Based on reviews of previous research within project man-agement and scale up in particular, it is clearly stated thata case study method is a suitable approach (Globerson andZwikael, 2002; Hashe, 2020; Ali et al., 2020; Barbalho, Silva,and Toledo, 2017). The case study enables the researcher toexamine a specific subject and investigate a particular organi-sation (Voss, Tsikriktsis, and Frohlich, 2002; Tidd and Pavitt,2011). Furthermore, the case study method comes with severalbenefits and enables a creative and innovative developmentof new theories whilst maintaining high-end validity (Voss,Tsikriktsis, and Frohlich, 2002). This statement is motivatedby; (1) The investigated phenomenon is studied within its realcontext. (2) The researcher is able to answer what-, how-and why questions while understanding the real context ofthe phenomenon. (3) The case study enables an exploratoryapproach for the investigation (ibid.). Also, exploration of asingle phenomenon in its real context generates a customisedand most probably a unique result which gives an in-depthknowledge useful for the investigated organisation (Collis andHussey, 2013).

Based on the review of previous research and this thesis’sobjective, the research method for the case study was carriedout with a qualitative approach. Specifically, the methodologyfollows the framework of an opportunist case study, and theauthors were able to investigate a certain phenomenon by theiraccess to a particular business (ibid.).


Fig. 6. This figure presents the five-step model of organisational change by Hong et al. (2019).

Moreover, the thesis empirical research was conducted byobservations and semi-structured interviews within the casecompany. In addition to this, best practice interviews withrelevant enterprises and customers were conducted. Also, thedata collection included in-depth interviews with customerproject managers, team function employees and employeesfrom top-management. The choice of employees were inter-viewed in order to capture several angels related to the man-agement and customer projects in particular. Collis and Hussey(2013) emphasises further that semi-structured interviews areappropriate for topics with high commercial sensitivity. Hence,this strengths the choice of interview approach for the casestudy further besides being commonly used in former research.Additionally, recurrent observations of project team members,the CPM and customer meetings were performed on siteat the case company. This gave a broader understanding ofactivities and processes within the projects and gave a betterunderstanding of how the customer projects were managed.From triangulating the collected data with the empirical,further findings were conducted. Hence, the authors gainedan increased insight of the case company’s current projectstructure. Lastly, these empirical findings acted as a foundationfor analysis and discussion.

What is understood is that the exploration process of theresearch is difficult to categorise into a fixed classificationsince it was neither positivists/interpretative nor strictly abduc-tive/deductive/inductive. However, the research process couldbe argued to have abductive elements, but the authors chose tocombine an iterative work model with a logical setup. Thereby,the choice of method is not strictly classified. Hence, it is up

to the beholder to interpret the chapters research descriptionon their own.

B. Research process

The investigated topic was requested from the case companyand it originated from a dilemma that they predict to encounterin a near future. When the problem definition was understoodfrom all parts, the authors formulated the operational problem.Then, the authors broke down the main problem into sub-areasand stated suitable research questions. The research processesstarted after getting the research topic approved by all actorsinvolved.

The initial work was mainly based on a literature review andconceptual findings for the theoretical parts of this study. Sec-ond, resources for both the case study and a literature reviewwere allocated. Literature of project management, customisa-tion, cross-functional collaboration, project organisations andagile work were reviewed. Together with aforementioned, theauthors created an outline of the research area, and highlightedits boundaries. This was then approved by the case company.Accordingly, the organisation’s projects were mapped by re-current observations. From this, resources for data gatheringwere selected and a company stakeholder was specified. Tosupport the answer of this thesis’s overall research question,three sub-questions were conducted. The purpose of the chosencase study aimed to explore the chosen research questionsand from this present a final solution for the case company.Overall, the empirical result conducted from the case studywas later on put into the study itself. The following analysisfrom one result generated data for new topics with results and


so on. This is described in detail in the case study. Moreover,the empirical findings of the case study were conducted anddiscussed to address this thesis’s overall research question, andon the other hand, contribute to the research area’s existingbody of knowledge. Lastly, the research process can be seen aslinear, but was actually performed with an iterative approach.This should be taken into consideration for researchers whoaim to repeat this study.

1) Literature review: A literature review is by definition,a critical evaluation of a research topic’s existing body ofknowledge. The concept of reviewing existing literature pro-vides the researcher with guidance and ensures that relevantresearch areas have been located and investigated (Collis andHussey, 2013). The literature review is further not only meantto describe the data collection from previous research, butemphasised to critically analyse relevant literature for theconducted study. This study’s literature review was performedbased upon the requirements and guidelines presented in thefollowing section.

The focus areas of this study’s literature review has mainlylaid on the setup of customer project management and howits projects is customised. This, by investigating silo organi-sations and agile management, and last, how cross-functionalintegration should be applied between functions. The researchseeks to enable a foundation to contrast the empirical studyand in turn address the three sub-research questions andhence answer the main question. The purpose of reviewingliterature of project management with different organisationalstructures and a various degree of customisation was to gatheran advanced understanding of their fundamentals and to mappotential threshold that could occur as a consequence. Liter-ature of conceptual data was provided to enable an overviewof the topic’s existing body of knowledge but also to examinethe intention to use it in a different context or a new industry.

To enable a flexible review of current literature, the concep-tual research followed an iterative approach, where data wascollected and recurrently analysed in advance of the reviewpresentation itself. The collection procedure was performedusing a wide span of search engines to provide this study witha various body of knowledge. Also, literature was sourcedfrom relevant books, journals, and other referred sourceswithin the scope of the research area.

The procedure of reviewing existing literature was con-ducted based on Collis and Hussey (ibid.) general analyticapproach. Hence, the literature was divided into categoriesbased on its content. For this, a spreadsheet was created tokeep track of the separated themes and categories. When thethemes were suitable arranged, the literature review took partby critically present the research area’s body of knowledge.

The literature review of this study seeks to present acomprehensive compilation of the research’s existing body ofknowledge. However this study’s chosen areas of investigationare fairly unexplored within the context of CPM in a modernindustry. Also, theory of agile management in the context oflarge-scale organisations is scarce. Hence, this study encoun-tered several gaps in the literature to fill and the reader must beaware of eventual pitfalls in the presented data. In addition to

this, due to limitations in time and resources, it is prohibitiveto ensure that a complete overview of relevant literature iscovered. Hence, the authors recommend future research to takeof with this study as foundation.

2) Case study: To perform a well-established case study,it becomes essential to fully comprehend the case company’sorganisational project structure. Accordingly, this generates anin-depth knowledge of its activities and conceptual models(ibid.). Further, the choice of case study as this study researchmethod seemed to go in hand with its purpose and objective(Collis and Hussey, 2013; Voss, Tsikriktsis, and Frohlich,2002). Last the case study was conducted following the fivestep model presented by Collis and Hussey (2013):

• Selecting the case:• Preliminary Investigation:• Data Collection:• Data Analysis:• Writing the Report:

a) Selecting the case: This section seeks to present howthe authors ensured that an appropriate case was selected(ibid.). Since this study’s area of investigation together with itspurpose and objective were conducted together with the casecompany, no selection of case company itself was performed.However, the chosen company’s business model might not bea perfect fit with the suggested problematisation, and it is ofimportance to investigate the relevance and appropriateness ofthe chosen company for the given problem. The choice of casestudy was set based on a request from the case company.

As mentioned in the introduction, the case company iscurrently operating in close collaboration with several auto-motive customers in parallel, developing the world’s greenestlithium ion battery cells. The project structure of today isstructured in silos, allowing every function to operate ratherindependently. This is sufficient with a small project portfoliowhere it is possible to accomplish a good communicationacross functions. However, with a growing demand, the casecompany aims to scale up their business unit with an increasedcustomer base, resulting in a larger project portfolio- puttingpressure on its organisational structure. From this, the problempresented from the case company was how the scale-up couldbe managed as maintaining close customer collaboration.

b) Preliminary investigation: In accordance to Collis andHussey (ibid.), the focus of the preliminary investigation is tobecome familiar with the context in which the case study wasperformed. This study kicked off with a preliminary investi-gation of the case company before any decision were takenregarding the direction of this study’s area of investigation.The reason for this was to create a better overview of howthe case company manage customer project, by looking intoits set up and working procedures. The preliminary investiga-tion included unstructured interviews with relevant employeesclose connected to the projects. This included the department’svice president, customer project managers, function managers,


and more. In addition, observations of customer meetings andinternal meetings with several customer projects were made.The outcome enabled a narrowed scope of investigation forthe case study and made the foundation for the selection ofresources to interview further. This is a necessity in accordancewith Collis and Hussey (2013), as it secures the accessibilityof resources and relevant primary data.

c) Data collection: This segment starts with a visualisa-tion of the data gathering through a determination of where,how, and when the data were collected. Also, the designand methods for this procedure were stated (ibid.). The workof the data gathering process is presented in Figure 7. Thevisualisation is meant to facilitate and clarify each step ofthe collection, starting with a split into high-level and in-depth level of the investigation. As aforementioned, the initialdata were conducted in the preliminary investigation phasewhich takes part in the high level in Figure 7. The initial datathen provided the following investigation with a foundation forproblem definition and readjustments of the research questionto increase its degree of relevance. Moreover, the remain-ing data collection in the high level implied unstructuredinterviews and observations which founded the structure forupcoming in-depth gathering, see Figure 7.

The first data conducted with an in-depth approach wasreceived in the Third site visit, see Figure 7. The focus was tounderstand existing customer project structures. Also, a newversion of a generic template 2.0 was presented meant to beaddressed on upcoming customer projects in the portfolio. Thisdata collection was conducted by semi-structured and struc-tured interviews with the director of the CPM. Additionally,this site visit involved observations in customer team meetingsto enhance the knowledge of the case company’s projectprocedures and customisation within their development. Theinterview was conducted in English.

The fourth site visit aimed to explore the current customerproject portfolio and its product development, but also to covergeneral topics relevant for project management. To gain thisdata, unstructured and semi-structured interviews where heldwith all customer project managers. This, to find possible jointfactors and differences between the projects. The interviewswere conducted in Swedish with some exceptions for foreignmanagers, these interviews were conducted in English.

Based on information gathered from previous site visits andespecially data collected in the project set-up, the fifth site visitintended to focus on the functions within the project. This, byunstructured and semi-structured interviews with a prismaticvalidation manager and her team. The information was thencompared with previous data collected. These interviews wereconducted in English. Furthermore, in addition to observationsand interviews with personnel at the case company, companyinternal documents of project structures, master timelines,organisational structures, project approaches and more, werecollected through emails and Microsoft Teams by reaching outto relevant employees.

The internal interview’s objective were meant to generatean in-depth understanding of the case company’s CPM pro-cedures and to better understand the current organisational

master structure for its customer projects. Moreover, the on-site observations were held in order to gain additional overallinformation of the company’s customer project activities. Also,the observations were performed to gather a better overviewof the case company and to get an insight in their customerwork. Last, the internal documentation was gathered with asimilar objective as the observations.

Based on the information collected from internal literature,internal interviews and observations of the case company, bestpractise interviews were conducted in order to contextualisethe topics towards other companies. The best practice inter-views seek to explore in how other enterprises manage changein their project model due to scale-up, how customisationand standardisation are utilized and how enterprises manageseveral customer projects at once. From this, joint key factorswere analysed and compared with findings in literature andthe internal data collection. The interviewees were picked inorder to represent similar companies with innovation, size,experience in scale-up and industry in mind.

d) Internal Interviews: Initially, all high level interviewswere contacted through the supervisor from the case companyto ensure a high-end relevance of knowledge for the given top-ics. All participants were informed with topics and objective inadvance and took part of the interviews on a voluntary basis.For the in-depth level interviews, the participants were chosenby the authors based on recommendations from the high-levelphase see Figure 7, but also picked to cover the hole spectraof the company with all customer projects in mind. This toensure that a fair replica of the case company’s organisationwas presented. Customer project managers were interviewedsince they are the ones managing the customer projects. Also,the customer project managers had the ultimate responsibilityfor the case companies customer communication. For this,all customer project in the portfolio were covered. The highnumber of samples enabled the authors to find joint strengthsand weaknesses and compare them to the company’s generictemplates and structures. The Vice president of the AF de-partment and the director of CPM were interviewed in orderto enhance the knowledge of customer projects and to betterunderstand the collected documents and models. Last, functionmanagers and engineers were selected as participants to gainbetter transparency of their functional roles (with communi-cation, working procedures and alignments in mind) in theproject structure. Together, all participants complemented eachother and were able to generate a holistic perception of theorganisation. The participants of the internal interview can beseen in Table I.

As mentioned in the introduction, the case company pre-sented a problematisation with scarce resources in mind. Dueto this, the time-slots for internal interviews were held nolonger than one hour at a time. Additionally, the complexity ofthe problem stated by the case company should be seen as timeconsuming, resulting in plenty of one hour time slots ratherthan a few longer ones. When possible, the interviews wereconducted in Swedish and else in English, which was the casefor the majority of the employees. The Swedish interviews


Fig. 7. An illustration of the internal data collection.

TABLE ITHIS TABLE PRESENTS THE CONDUCTED IN-HOUSE INTERVIEWS AT

NORTHVOLT. DUE TO SECRECY, ONLY THE ROLE TITLE IS PRESENTED.

In-house interviewsRole Organisation Length [min]Vice President Northvolt AB 30A&FDirector of Northvolt AB 90CPMCustomer Project Northvolt AB 300ManagerCustomer Project Northvolt AB 60ManagerCustomer Project Northvolt AB 30ManagerCustomer Project Northvolt AB 30ManagerCustomer Project Northvolt AB 30ManagerCost Engineer Northvolt AB 30Manager P&L Northvolt AB 30Prismatic Validation

became slightly more fluent and resulted in an excellent out-come, whilst the English interviews brought minor elementsof uncertainties due to a wide span of industry specific wordsand abbreviations. However, if needed, questions were askedin various ways to ensure that the correct information wasreceived. Due to the pandemic situation in the society, someinterviews were held in person and some over MicrosoftTeams.

For the unstructured topics of the interviews, the subjectswere presented in an open way and the interviewees wereable to answer freely. As a result, the interviews became morediscussion like, with plenty of follow-up questions. In thiscase, the interviewees took the role of what can be seen as astory teller, and presented information and examples in severalways. This caused the authors to take a passive approach in-between their upcoming questions.

For the semi-structured interviews, the agenda was clearlystated and the interviews were conducted based on pre-madequestions. However, the authors kept an open approach alsofor these questions resulting in plenty of follow-up questionsfor high-end topics. In addition, both authors took part of allinterviews, resulted in an detailed outcome and enabled theauthors to take turns and raise some topics more than others.For this, a mixture of closed and open questions were stated.The internal interviewees were contacted in advance of everyinterview with topic and agenda. As these interviews weremeant to create an overview of the company’s organisationalstructure as well as generate an in depth knowledge of theproject management itself, the answers were conducted bynotes. Last, in accordance to Collis and Hussey (2013), allinterviews were conducted by both authors to ensure that noinformation was set aside.

In addition to the previous described data collection, follow-up questions and reflections were sent out by email or phonecalls. The process is illustrated in the end of the data collec-tion mapping in Figure 7. Also, as aforementioned, the datacollection does not strictly follow a given approach and theinformation was iterative conducted during the whole research


TABLE IITHIS TABLE PRESENTS THE CONDUCTED BEST PRACTICE INTERVIEWS.

DUE TO SECRECY, ONLY THE ROLE TITLE IS PRESENTED.

Best practice interviewsRole (Employee) Organisation Length[min]Release-train Volvo Cars 60EngineerBusiness & Org. Knowit 90DeveloperSr Manager Business Spotify 60DevelopmentProject Manager Bosch 60Business Area Nexer Group 90Manager R&DDesign Director SEBx 60

EY DobermanStrategist EY Doberman 60CEO EY Doberman 60Design Director ICAx 60

EY Doberman

process in accordance to the empiric. With a well-establishedoverview of the topics and a pleasant foundation of informa-tion, the upcoming empirical data gathering focused on bestpractice interviews with external companies and consultants.

e) Best practice interviews: In addition to both literature,in-house observations and internal interviews, best practiceinterviews were conducted. These interviews were held withexperts and consultants in project- and change managementand companies with experience of similar journeys as the casecompany. All participants are illustrated in Figure II downbelow. These interviews were meant to generate a deeper un-derstanding of how other companies manage structural changein customer projects. Last, the empirical findings functionedas a complement to the literature review in order to answerthe research questions.

As previously mentioned, there is no direct similar companyto look at when it comes to organisational scale-up withinpresent time. As the industry is under constant change, it be-comes rather irrelevant to examine industrial giants in the samebusiness and the interviews are instead meant to investigate ifthere are any common practices or smart solutions to have inmind when scaling up. For this, the interviewees were selectedto cover several areas of a scale-up. The initial interviews inthis step, were conducted with relevant people and contacts ofthe case company.

Moreover, forthcoming participants were selected based onrecommendations from the early interviewees. The process ofselecting people can thereby also be seen as iterative as oneinterview led to a new one and so forth. All best practiceinterviews were conducted through Zoom or Microsoft Teamsin accordance with the current restrictions from the pandemic.The interviews followed a semi-structured pattern whereatmain questions and themes where sent out to the participantsin advance. The overall agenda for the interviews can be seenin the Appendix.

However, just as in the internal interviews, this best practice

data gathering was conducted with an open approach, whichenabled the interviewees to focus on the topics in which theyhad the highest expertise. For this, both open and closedquestions were asked, resulting in statistical and in-depthanswers. The interviews were approximately one hour longand all interviews were recorded and transcribed in order toensure that no relevant information was lost in the process.Both authors took part in conducting the interviews to ensurethat all areas of interest were covered. Lastly, the result ofthe best practice interviews were triangulated with literatureand output from the internal empiric at the case study andcompiled in the upcoming chapter; Analysis.

f) Data analysis: The data analysis was conductedthrough pattern mapping and theme identification. In accor-dance to Collis and Hussey (2013), a with-in case analysis wasconducted given one specific case company. Hence, it was vitalto fully understand the case company’s models and structuresin order to identify patterns (ibid.). Moreover, the analysewas conducted by triangulating data from several sources.Accordingly, the triangulation covered data from the iterativeliterature review, the observations and documentation from thecase company and the internal- and best practice interviews.Finally, the upcoming analysis was performed based on thethemes and patterns gathered from the triangulation.

This study’s method of choice follows the characteristicsof a qualitative approach, meaning that the data analysis wasperformed in accordance with Collis and Hussey (ibid.) threestep model. The data analysis started with a strict screeningin the initial high-level stage. This to ensure that only highlyrelevant literature was investigated further. Internal companyspecific information was gathered and detailed data of organ-isational and project structures were collected. Thereby, thisensured that all data had a high resolution for the objectiveand scope of the investigation.

Next, data from the internal observations and interviewswere grouped into three main areas of focus: managingcustomer projects, communication and customisation. Theseareas were chosen with scalability in mind. The focus areaswere decided since they step-wise were able to answer theresearch questions. Second, internal information were appliedas a foundation for the best practice interviews. In the processof conducting the data, the analysis was based on themesfound in several interviews. Hence, different perspectives andthoughts were compiled together and synthesised, resulting ina multi-bottomed outcome of the concepts and activities. Thecollection of data from internal documentation were sorted outusing a similar process of pattern mapping as for the interviewsand observations. However, this procedure was performedusing coding and logical tree-diagram. Last, the outcome wasaligned with the supervisor at the case company to ensurethat the compilation was correct and that no confidentialinformation was shared.

As aforementioned, the empirical result was conducted withan iterative approach. In addition, the set up of the interviewswas formed by semi-structure questions. Hence, informationgathered in initial interviews were used and reflected uponin the latter ones. Early findings were thereby analysed both


by the authors, but also with the help of the intervieweesthemselves. This provided an in-depth understanding of thefindings, which founded this study’s final conclusion. Fromthese findings, several phenomenon were identified. Hence, thefindings could be seen as key results to explore the researchquestions.

g) Writing the report: The fifth step presented by Collisand Hussey (2013) treats the writing of the report, includinglinkage of the empirical findings with the analysis and con-clusion. This enables reading the report in the first place, butalso ensures that the result is communicated and understood.

C. Research quality

Research quality discuss this study’s validity and reliabilityby the means of a conducted case study. The discussion fol-lows the framework presented by Gibbert, Ruigrok, and Wicki(2008) assuming four aspects, one touching reliability andthree within the topic of validity. The framework highlightspotential areas of improvements, provided with an explanationof the given measurements, used in the discussion.

Internal validity, describes the researchers ability to identifyits findings and conclusions with the use of logical arguments.Also, internal validity highlights the connections drawn be-tween themes/variables and the empirical result. This studycan be measured by its triangulation of data, pattern mappingand the research set up (ibid.). In this case, this study can becriticised for the choice of patterns mapped connected to theresearch topics. As some of the empirical findings also coverareas slightly out of the scope of this study - making themrather irrelevant. However, this strengthened the understandingof the investigated area, but one could argue that some topicscould be left untouched. On the other hand, the authors foundall questions necessary to provide a knowledge base on whichthis study is built upon. Moreover, the number of interviewparticipants for a qualitative case study could be seen as few,but the people chosen initially were carefully picked based onrecommendations from highly relevant people at the case studyand further, from the best practice interviews themselves.

In the end of the empirical investigation, several answersof the semi-structured questions became fairly similar andone could therefore argue for a high validity of the answers.Also, in the initial research, the authors found themselvesconducting the same literature. Hence, one could argue thatthis study could have benefit by having a broader initial bodyof knowledge before narrowing it down. Construct validityrefers to case study’s relevance by highlighting its intention.This is necessary to have in mind during the entire process ofdata collection to ensure that the study contributes with what itis meant to do. Further, construct validity evaluates the numberof sources used to strengthen statements and phenomenon.Last, construct validity also underlines transparency of thereport in order to ensure replicability of the research method.

This study was triangulated using documentation, casecompany observations interviews together with best practiceinterviews with experts and external companies. However,the process was heavily qualitative based. Hence, one could

indicate that important areas might have passed unseen. Inthe beginning of each interview, the authors presented theirresearch topic and objectives in detail. This was done inorder to increase the efficiency of each interview and tomake sure that the semi-structured questions resulted in arewarding discussion. Moreover, the choice of intervieweeswas based on recommendations from the case company’semployees and experts in the subjects. Hence, the expertiseof the participants could at first glimpse be seen as weighted.This as participants in turn recommended people in similarcompanies or similar businesses. However, even though someinterviewees operated in the same organisation, their roles andexpertise covered different body of knowledge, and the resultof the interviews differed. Also, in several areas, experts fromvarious industries and with different backgrounds contributedwith similar answers and conclusions which indicated on ahigh relevance of the answers.

To broaden the internal observations and interviews on thecase company, the selection of employees to interview waschosen to cover both hierarchical positions but also knowledgeof several levels in the project structure and activities. Theprocess of getting from research question to conclusion ispresented as transparent as possible, with all questions andbody of evidence clearly discussed. Also, all sections start witha short introduction to following section in order to simplifythe reading.

External validity refers to if the theories and activities foundcould be applied in other settings than what is shown in thisstudy (ibid.). According to Gibbert, Ruigrok, and Wicki (ibid.)External validity is also known as generalisability, which couldbe divided into two sub-categories: analytical-and statistical.Statistical generalisability is distinct from analytical by makinginterference between populations and data, whilst analyticalrefers to generalisability from a case study on theory. To satisfythis category, it is recommended to perform several (about 5-10) case studies. Either in the form of a nested approach,focusing on the same organisation, or a cross-case approach,investigating several companies (ibid.).

External validity also refers to the process of foundingand motivate the chosen methodology by contextualise thiswith high transparency to enable the reader to evaluate itsvalidity itself. One could argue that this report lacks onexternal validity due to the absent of a clearly describedconceptual description. However, this is a consciously choiceof the authors to ensure that this study goes in line with thecase company’s required confidential level. This is also statedin the section Selecting the case. Moreover, the case studyinvestigates a case of one given company. However, as thebest practice interviews applies practices and thoughts fromother enterprises, the outcome becomes rather general as theconcept of rapid growth remains non-company specific.

The last category presented by Gibbert, Ruigrok, and Wicki(ibid.) highlights reliability, referring to that the reader shouldbe able to end up with a similar result if following the sameresearch method. Reliability builds on that informational mate-rial and documents are kept available after the study, togetherwith documentation and step wise description presented in apleasant way and if the case company’s name is stated (ibid.).


In this study, the method chapter strives to provide the readerwith sufficient transparency and detailed information to assurethat the reader has enough to replicate this study. However,as the majority of crucial evidence and data are providedqualitatively through interviews and observations, the outcomeof a replica might differ which is necessary to have in mindif planning to do so. Further, to increase reliability in theempirical phase, the internal questions asked in interviews areattached in the Appendix. Thus, this could on the other handhave been increased additionally, with a supplement of notesor protocols of the answers.

The name of the case company is presented earlier on inthis study. However, the method chapter chose to call it bythe name of “Case company” as it increases the generalisationof the method. The research do also follow the four criteriaof ethical insurance in accordance with The Swedish Re-search Council (2021), (1) the information requirement, (2) theinformation consent, (3) the confidential requirement and (4)the good use requirement. Accordingly, all participants in bothinternal and best practise interviews where informed with thepurpose and objective of the questionnaire in advance, and alsothe opportunity to neglect information they found sensitive.

In summary, this study’s empiric is strengthen by hightransparency and multiple sources for triangulation. However,the reliability could benefit of additional supplements in abroader area of focus.

D. Chapter summary

The methodology chapter aims to provide the reader withinformation of its underlying processes. This study’s choiceof method is conducted by a case study, strengthen withsupplemental best practice interviews of experts and exter-nal companies. All underlying steps are presented in detail,starting with the research approach and process, coveringdata gathering of internal documents and files at the casecompany, internal interviews and observations together withexternal best practice interviews. The data collected was laterprocessed, analysed and contextualised in order to sort relevantinformation from other. The chapter ends by investigatingthe validity and reliability of the case study based on theframework presented by (Gibbert, Ruigrok, and Wicki, 2008).Next chapter strives to present the case study’s results andanalysis described in the method. The focus lies on theempirical outcome with connections to the literature findingswith the aim to address this study’s research questions.

IV. ANALYSIS

This section presents findings correlated with the sub-research questions; (1.1) How is customer project manage-ment managed? (1.2) How is knowledge transferred betweenprojects? (1.3) How is customer project management cus-tomised? The outcome of these questions is to explore themain research question; (1) How to manage customer projectmanagement during rapid scale up? Findings are sourcedfrom conducted interviews, both best practice and in-house.First subheading presents Northvolt’s current organisational

structure and ecosystem. The second subheading presents ourfindings from an external point of view, in terms of bestpractice interviews. To clarify the outcome of the exploredresearch questions, the latter sub-section begins by presentingthe difference between a start-up and a scale-up. This leads usinto the trade-off between standardisation and customisation,and thence the dynamic in organisational structures. At last,this section ends by exploring the impact of internal andexternal integration.

A. Map of the ecosystem

This section presents the result from the conducted in-houseinterviews and internal material, whereat the aim is to mapcurrent ecosystem at Northvolt. Accordingly, this section aimsto reflect on the result of how customer project managementis managed. Hence, this section presents a mapping of NV’sautomotive & foundry (AF) department in general and itscustomer project management in particular.

NV’s AF department is set-up as a PBO, framed as ahierarchical organisational structure, as visualised in Figure 8below. The AF vice president is at the top of this organisation,functioning as a link between the top-management and thecustomer project management. Second in the hierarchy is thedirector of the CPM team, also operating in close collabo-ration with the top-management but is simultaneously highlyinvolved in the customer projects themselves.

The director of CPM is ultimately responsible for the finaloutcome of the customer projects, and leads this together withthe customer project managers. However, the director doesnot manage any customer projects itself, but contributes withsupport and assistance when needed. The director of CPM isthe one framing the operational structures for the department.This is done both within the project portfolio, but also in theprojects themselves.

Under the director of the CPM operates five customerproject managers. Their customer projects are working inparallel, whereat each PM has the main responsibility forone automotive customer, see Figure 8. The customer projectsare structured in silos, meaning that all projects have theirown function specific engineer at all levels. The silo modelenables each project to operate independently, and hencethe functions are able to sub-optimise their unit rather thanfocusing on several projects at once. The silo structure forthe customer projects origin from Northvolt’s initial start-up phase. However, as mentioned in the theory, the silomodel comes with isolated fundamentals and is described asnon-sufficient in regards of communication and exchange ofknowledge across projects. Also, the silo model is expensivein large scale, as parallel development with the same purposeis required in able to please each customer. According to thePMs, this model has been selected rather naturally, and due tothe current small scale of the organisation, its major drawbacksis yet to come.

As aforementioned, the five projects in the CPM portfolioserves a single automotive customer each. However, the CPMteam has weekly alignments and meeting in order to keepeveryone informed and updated. These alignments are held at


Fig. 8. An illustration of the automotive & foundry department.

several levels of management. First and foremost, each cus-tomer project manager runs weekly project meetings with itsfunctional managers. This, both internally, but also externallywith customer involvements. These meetings are meant tohighlight eventual risks and obstacles in the projects, but alsoto ensure that the project is progressing in accordance withits master timeline. Second, additional management meetingsare held to manage topics beyond the mandate of the CPM,but also to ensure that the projects are aligned with uppermanagement. Customer meeting with external management isfurther held on a regular basis. Third, Project SteerCo meetingsare held on a weekly basis, in which the customer projectmanagers are able to discuss and align topics highly relevantfor the entire enterprise. All meetings follow strict agendasin order to be streamlined and ensure that all relevant topicsare touched upon. In addition to the weekly project meetings,monthly milestone reviews are held in order to track theprogress in detail. The milestone review is later converted intoan milestone report and presented to the upper management.The level of communication within the A&F department isillustrated in Figure 9.

Moreover, the CPM works in close collaboration with itscustomers to enhance a streamlined product development andto meet customer requirements. This brings each project withtransparency and fast feedback loops. In order for the CPMteam to manage this internally, clear milestones and pervadingplanning are fundamental parts. These latter are key compo-nents throughout Northvolt’s organisation. Northvolt strives tomeet customer demands and to deliver customised products,hence customer opinions are highly valued. In respect to that,

Fig. 9. An illustration of the AF organisations levels of communication -structured in hierarchy.

the CPM team measure customer satisfaction through netpresent scores. However, the organisational structure is stillunder development, and standard measurables across projectsare yet to be established.


B. Interviews

This section presents findings conducted from best practiceinterviews. The aim was to collect data for exploring the threesub-questions, and in turn, approach the main research ques-tion; How to manage customer project management duringrapid scale up? First of all, the focal point revolves aroundscalability in customer project management. Hence, this sec-tion initially account for some clear-cut differences betweena start-up and an incumbent enterprise. Further on, it seemsto be a trade-off between standardisation and customisationwhen it comes to scalability, which is accordingly described.In this context, it is noteworthy to highlight the significancewith organisational structure, and what impact it will bring.Agile methods seems to be one of the foremost pronouncedapproaches that can support customisation while scaling up.In that sense, internal and external integration are marked askey factors.

1) Start-up to scale-up: Scalability is appealing to manyenterprises in different industries, but maintaining a core com-petence with a low number of participants is for some to bepreferred. The latter one facilitates customisation and enablesthe enterprise to maintain ongoing communication across theorganisation (Strategist, 2021; Business Org. Developer, 2021).Strategist (2021), strategist at EY Doberman, claims that thenumber of 25 people within an organisation is somewhatthe upper level to retain a ’small’ company and maintain afamiliar atmosphere. Moreover, at this level the organisationcan tailor everything, and each customer project is viewed assomething unique. However, as the organisation grows, thedemand for standardised and streamlined processes increase.Many organisations goes from being a small enterprise, withhigh flexibility and tailored projects, til having an increasedcustomer base with high focus on efficiency by stripping offnon-essentials and implement fast moving processes (Strate-gist, 2021; Business Org. Developer, 2021).

From an industrial perspective, a clear disparity between astart-up and a well-established enterprise is the threshold ofmanufacturing standardised products. The mentality within astart-up is often disposed towards satisfying customer require-ments and focuses on customisation. This approach requires anenterprise to foster high flexibility within its organisation, butlikewise towards its customers, in order to produce somethingunique and customised. Customisation and collaboration goeshand in hand, and at a moderate scale, these characteristicsare prosperous. In that sense, the drive is to meet customerdemands, and hence generate profit. In other words, thenumber of common components are not distinctive, hencestandardisation and mass production are not considered asfocal points. On the contrary, a well-established enterprisehas a bigger opportunity to set benchmarks in the industry,and thereby an increased possibility to implement standardisedprocesses and products. On the one hand, a well-establishedenterprise does not only have the possibility to standardise,but also needs to standardise in order to generate profit(Business Area Manager RD, 2021). On the other hand, thereis no saying that the whole production has to be standardised.

According to CEO (2021), CEO at EY Doberman, today’sview of customisation and standardisation is two-sided. Inits simplicity, the traditional point of view does not promotemerging these two terminal points. However, it is emphasisedthat the key is to find a balance, and extract traits fromboth parts to create a best-fit (CEO, 2021; Business AreaManager RD, 2021; Business Org. Developer, 2021). Figure10 represents a framework produced by the authors to illustratethe key takeaways for scaling up. This framework is applicableto this whole section.

Historically, the term ’scalability’ has been fixed, but in therecent past, new approaches has come to light. Traditionalscalability constitutes with a linear curve, which is easy toduplicate, whilst an innovative up-scaling corresponds withcontinuously devising something new. The latter one requiresan organisation to practice other muscles that has not yet beentrained in traditional thinking. Creativeness and innovation aresuch attributes that are less gentle to scale. However, these twoare generated in its highest degree under strict frameworksand clear milestones. Innovative scale-up is considered as atoolbox available for the workforce to capitalise on (CEO,2021). This means that, on top of a strict framework, anorganisation has to build layers of mindset, capabilities, andtrust for the workforce to act on. The idea of innovative scale-up is concentrated on increasing a specific mindset, ratherthan focusing on a perfect manual with several must. Thismindset corresponds with giving mandate and freedom tothe workforce, hence, this also includes responsibility (CEO,2021; Relese-train Engineer, 2021; Project Manager, 2021).In this context, CEO (2021) emphasised a quotation by TonyHsich, founder of the shoe brand Zappos, saying: ”deliveringhappiness”. Delivering happiness is a philosophy at Zapposwhich means ’freedom under responsibility’. This philosophypromotes management to give mandate to the workforceclosest to the customer, in order to greet the customer in thebest way possible. This is an example of a method where theenterprise developed a mindset in the workforce, rather thanfocusing on a rule book.

In this context, creating a mindset is about empoweringteams, and hence generate an internal driving force. The realcompetence is sourced within the teams and they should havethe mandate to act accordingly. This shift of ownership, fromtop management all the way down to each team, createsan environment that is more inclusive and communicative.Top management will then focus on supporting each team,generate enabler for an optimised flow, and identify gaps ofknowledge that might be crucial. Also, this structure promotesmanagement to operate on a higher level and focus on theorganisation’s way forward (CEO, 2021; Relese-train Engi-neer, 2021; Sr Manager Business Developer, 2021; ProjectManager, 2021). Yet, this shift of mindset is not obtainedwith little effort (Relese-train Engineer, 2021; CEO, 2021;Project Manager, 2021). A well-established organisation hasits ingrained mentality in how to progress, and it requires moreeffort to transform such manner in comparison with a new bornenterprise (Relese-train Engineer, 2021; CEO, 2021; Strategist,2021; Project Manager, 2021).

From an industrial perspective, traditional scale-up is mea-


Fig. 10. This framework illustrates key points for an organisation going from being a start-up to a scale-up.

sured by performance and efficiency. This culture counts eachstep within the process with a focus on diminishing any kindof stumble or error. Due to its distinct approach, innovativescale-up cannot be measured alike. In this case, an organisationshould have two operative systems; one production operativesystem and one flexible operative system. The former oneshould focus on processes that needs to be optimised interms of standardisation. The latter one is the muscle thatneeds practice. The flexible operative system needs targets andmilestones that corresponds with such KPIs and incentives.The production operative system and flexible operative systemshould be considered as individual beats, whereat balancingthese two within an organisation is one of the most heavy,and important parts (CEO, 2021).

The conventional take on scale-up is that it implies with anincreased demand of resources. In the case when an enterpriseprocure additional customers, the need of workforce to managethese grows. One solution could be to hire more staff, butthis calls for a large investment and is not practically scale-up. Hence, for an organisation to be scalable, it needs toallocate and utilise existing resources accordingly (Sr ManagerBusiness Developer, 2021; Business Area Manager RD, 2021).Before scaling up, an enterprise needs to look into its currentresources, and review whether it is necessary to acquire moreresources or not. Creating a map of the allocated resourceswill help an enterprise to underwrite whats needed to scaleup (Project Manager, 2021). Having that said, organisationalscale up is not about adding an additional amount of resources,it is about utilising existing resources in a suitable mannerthat enables an organisation to deal with further customers

simultaneously. Reusing existing resources is the key factor,and the product needs to be configured in a way that fits differ-ent customers. As such, create a foundation with standardisedelements, and on top of this, features to customise. (BusinessArea Manager RD, 2021; Sr Manager Business Developer,2021; Business Org. Developer, 2021).

The number of customers does not distinguishes a scale-upfrom an established enterprise. The breaking point is when anenterprise reaches a level whereat the product is a commodity,and hence, there is an urgency to identify and implementstandardised processes or modules to generate profit. Thetransformation from being a start-up to an incumbent enter-prise is identified as when the enterprise gains market shares.At this stage, the enterprise needs to capitalise and adapt itsprocesses. Yet, this indication is not self-evident and it its up toeach enterprise separately to identify its position and condition(Business Area Manager RD, 2021; Design Director, 2021b).

The summarized difference between a start-up and an in-cumbent enterprise in this study is the threshold of standardis-ation and customisation. The latter one is the focal point for astart-up, which constantly aims to please customer demands.On the contrary, an incumbent can set benchmark in theindustry, and create a core of standardised products. On top ofthis, layers of customised attributes can be managed in orderto meet the customer requirements. The following section willgo deeper into standardisation and customisation.

2) Standardisation and customisation: As aforementioned,standardisation and customisation has distinguished traits thatfacilitates an organisation in different aspects. The former


one corresponds with high efficiency and low modificationrate, whilst the latter facilitates customer integration and lowefficiency. Accordingly, there is a trade-off between customi-sation and standardisation. A start-up is characterised with alow number of workmen, which facilitates collaboration andflexibility, which in turn enables high customisation. However,as an enterprise grows, the need to standardise processes ormodules increase. In this study, modules represent a part of aproduct or process. The breaking point is when an organisationreaches a level whereat there is no longer any effect of scaling,the only thing that is growing is the number of customerswith different requirements. At this stage, the enterprise hasbuilt up a technical debt that needs to be converted intoprofitability, and the only way out is through standardisa-tion. At this level, the organisation has to leave the start-upstructure, transform into a well-established organisation, andbuild a platform from which it is possible to standardise from(Business Area Manager RD, 2021; Design Director, 2021a).Design Director (2021a) compared these standardised modulesas LEGO pieces. All pieces are standardised, but when puttingthem together, one will compose a product highly customised.

Aligned with this, the key is to find processes or modulesthat are in such condition that benefits the organisation tostandardise, and thereby support the organisation with avoidingreinventing the same thing again. In addition to this, it isimportant to find those processes or modules that are ofimportance for an organisation to maintain flexible. In thatsense, an enterprise will learn by doing, and it becomes ofhigh value to standardise lessons learned. As aforementioned,the organisation can be seen as an onion, having a core withstandardised elements and layers of customised features (CEO,2021; Business Org. Developer, 2021; Business Area Man-ager RD, 2021; Relese-train Engineer, 2021; Project Manager,2021; Design Director, 2021a). As mentioned earlier, there isa clear trade-off between customisation and standardisation.Customisation is driven by innovations and market dynamics,and requires an environment that is built upon trust. Thecustomised layers are maintained flexible and these layersenable an enterprise to manage speed. Whilst on the contrary,standardised modules compose to benchmarks in the industry,and they do not require a development rate similarly to theformer (Design Director, 2021a), see Figure 11. Accordingly,it is not an easy fix to identify which modules to standardiseand which one to customise. This action requires experienceand expertise, and should be lead by a team or a person havingthe entire ownership (Business Area Manager RD, 2021).

The key is to promote a mindset that is suitable for acertain department within an organisation (CEO, 2021; Relese-train Engineer, 2021) CEO (2021) argues that people in heavyengineering departments, such as developing batteries, shouldhave this structured production operative system. Whilst,people working with customer project management shouldapproach the flexible operative system. In that sense, the tradeoff comes down to how much it is possible to standardise, andstill enable customisation. Standardisation makes the processmore rigid, whilst customisation comes with higher risk andmore flexibility (Business Area Manager RD, 2021; CEO,2021; Design Director, 2021a). However, as aforementioned,

Fig. 11. This figure illustrates the ”onion” structure; a core with standardisedmodules with flexible layers to enable customisation, and on top of this amindset that generates sustainable growth.

the disparity of a start-up and a well-established enterprisecomes down to the degree of customisation or standardisation.Aligned with this, the size of an enterprise facilitates differentorganisational structures. Generally known, agile methodologypromotes customisation. Hence, next section will go deeperinto the correlation between organisational structure and scal-ability.

3) Organisational structure: It seems to be is a disparityin how the organisational structure might affect an enterpriseapproaching agile methods or not. At a small scale, theagile approach has its beneficial traits in terms of an artlesscommunication across the organisation, and a self-acting flex-ibility that promotes this type of methodology. Though, as anorganisation grow, the inborn communication and flexibility,that earlier has been a procedure by nature, decreases dueto the increased number of involved actors. Some say thatscalability often amount with loosing the indigenous agileapproach that small companies obtain (Business Org. Devel-oper, 2021), whilst other claim that agile approaches does notoriginate from the size of an enterprise. This means that, thearchitectural layout of an organisation is not dependent on thesize of an enterprise (Business Area Manager RD, 2021).

Yet, scale-up often corresponds with an increased hierarchywithin an organisation, which in turn leads to a decreasedflexibility and a stiff unyielding frame or structure. Scale-up is often recognised by an increased bureaucracy and slowfunctioned processes. A common reason for working agile iswhen the conditions for a product is in constant change, andwhen the enterprise needs to be adoptable for new customerrequirements. Also, agile methods are to be preferred by the


developer when the product contains a high complexity, or/anddeveloped in a complex environment. A complex product cor-responds with not knowing the outcome by start, but throughiterative processes working your way forward and successivelyincreasing your knowledge base (Business Org. Developer,2021; Strategist, 2021). In agile methodology, each iterationis a learning cycle, and this is considered as a cornerstonefor complex products (Business Org. Developer, 2021). Thisiterative process is also described as a feedback loop, whichincreases an organisation’s possibility to modify the productduring its development. It is generally known that softwareproducts has a higher rate of feedback loops than hardware,which promotes software enterprises to operate agile. Butnevertheless, hardware developers can still approach agilemethodology, thus with longer feedback loops. These feedbackloops provides a continuous demonstration of the output foreach modification. In that sense, the reason for approachingagile methods is to increase the number of feedback loops(Business Area Manager RD, 2021; Relese-train Engineer,2021).

In order for an organisation to approach agile methodology,it requires a comprehensive and well-structured planning, andit needs to be synchronised throughout the organisation. Acommon framework utilised in agile methodology is the ScaledAgile Framework (SAFe). This framework is used for scalingagile, and it describes how teams, with high inter-dependency,can collaborate in order to create a joint product. SAFe iscurrently used at Volvo Cars, and it helps them to get anoverview of their project portfolio. This overview becomesa foundation for prioritisation and it helps the organisation toidentifying product elements that generates the highest value.In that sense, the prioritisation is made across all projectsby start, and can help an enterprise to approach productelements that are connected to business and customer value(Business Org. Developer, 2021; Relese-train Engineer, 2021).However, implementing agile methodology is not an easy fix.As aforementioned, the inborn mentality in how to operate isa big obstacle. In that sense, an enterprise should make roomfor external expertise and guidance (Business Org. Developer,2021; CEO, 2021; Project Manager, 2021).

Agile methodology promotes cross-functional collabora-tion within an organisation. The area of responsibility isassigned to each team, but how to deliver is shaped betweenthe functions (Business Area Manager RD, 2021; Relese-train Engineer, 2021; Project Manager, 2021). The key isto make sure that each team feels full ownership of theirproduct, all the way from the starting point to the endingpoint (Business Area Manager RD, 2021; Project Manager,2021; Business Org. Developer, 2021; Relese-train Engineer,2021; CEO, 2021). Moreover, the agile approach requires awell-founded knowledge within the organisation. This meansthat, the expertise needs to be located all the way out tothe fingertips of an organisation, otherwise, the control mustbe headed top-down (Relese-train Engineer, 2021; Strategist,2021; Business Area Manager RD, 2021).

Having a team responsible for the output, such as in theSILO structure, helps to constrain its complexity and makesthe process flow more efficient. The agile approach ensures

that each team works iterative with developing its module.Adding to this, the management needs to create a system inte-gration that clearly declares what each module needs to fulfilin order to fit the final product. The product owner is obligedto concertize what to be prioritised. At last, each team is onlyaloud to deliver its module into the system integration when itis aligned with the requirement specification. Accordingly, thistype of system integration requires a comprehensive planning(Business Area Manager RD, 2021; Relese-train Engineer,2021).

In that sense, it is emphasised that a clear path forward playsan important role within an organisation. Regardless of wherein the hierarchy, it is essential to have well-defined milestonesand deliverables before setting off. These latter should beplayed out differently depending on department or level ofhierarchy. It simply comes down to storytelling. By givingthe workforce a motive is considered equal to giving themfuel to act on (CEO, 2021). The bottleneck for an enterpriseworking in silos can actually be its hierarchical structure.When the enterprise grows, the ownership gets to big forthe limited number of managers (Design Director, 2021b).However, in combination with well-defined milestones, anenterprise will also gain by defining what functions and rolesthat will be needed to accomplish the requested output (CEO,2021; Strategist, 2021; Project Manager, 2021).

A common goal-setting tool is Objective and Key Results(OCR) produced by Google. Many project organisations usethis tool to identify KPIs, whereat these KPI’s respond tothe objectives. This, in combination with pushing down theownership, will enable the workforce to be self-propelled(Design Director, 2021b; CEO, 2021). However, despite thepositive outcome of KPIs, some risks are highlighted. Oneshould be aware of the power of KPIs, since these steer theworkforce in a certain direction and if this direction is notstrictly aligned with the mission, it can cause huge damageand become extremely costly. The implementation of KPIs isa dynamic process and needs regular updates. Also, the powerof a KPI can be balanced by implementing a contra KPI. Noneof the extremes are worth striving towards, since it implieswith its utmost position. In that sense, the aim is to find alevel between these KPIs that balances and corresponds to abeneficial outcome. As aforementioned, the KPI will steer theworkforce whereat this tool can be utilised in different waysdepending on the target, stage in the life-cycle, stage in theproject and so on (Business Area Manager RD, 2021).

The idea with agile methodology is about empoweringteams and dedicate the whole life-cycle responsibility of amodule to solely one team, and decrease the number of han-dovers. The product development flow goes through differentphases, and by having the whole cycle dedicated to one teamdiminish the risk for competency loss. The output gives ahigher efficiency and layout that supports finding pitfalls ata higher rate (Relese-train Engineer, 2021; Business AreaManager RD, 2021; Project Manager, 2021).

As aforementioned, agile approaches implies with pushingdown the ownership, and dedicating the product responsibilityto one team. In that sense, the ownership ends up within alimited number of workers that has the obligation to deliver the


requested output (Relese-train Engineer, 2021; Business AreaManager RD, 2021; Project Manager, 2021). Also, each teamshould have its own resources and work somewhat unattachedto other teams. In other words, each teams should avoidsharing resources across other teams due to misleading di-vision of responsibility. If the number of participants involvedincreases, the risk for ambiguities and misleading directivesgrows (Business Area Manager RD, 2021).

Regardless of the established organisational structure, manyorganisations seems to rock back and forth as a cradle be-tween different structures. By the time an enterprise reachesa certain level that requires extra effort being innovative, thecourse of action is often a spin-off. The idea is to create anexternal platform that supports new thinking and generatesspeed without putting any stress on the current organisation.Once the platform has established it will be interconnectedto the original platform. Again, at this stage the processstarts over. The idea is to concertize what to standardise forscalability, and what to keep flexible to customise. In thatsense, the cradle moves back and forth between differentplatforms. (Business Area Manager RD, 2021; Sr ManagerBusiness Developer, 2021; Strategist, 2021; Design Director,2021a; Design Director, 2021b). Business Area Manager RD(2021) and Sr Manager Business Developer (2021) describesthis as creating a start-up within a well-established enterprise.

The reason for doing a spin-off is to generate new productdevelopment, and to escape the traditional waterfall, or silo,approach (Business Area Manager RD, 2021; Sr ManagerBusiness Developer, 2021; Design Director, 2021a; Design Di-rector, 2021b). The waterfall approach is beneficial when theoutcome is strict and clear, and the only thing to do is to keeppushing towards performance (Design Director, 2021b). Onthe one hand, the external platform generates new thinking, buton the other hand, the external platform must be in symbiosiswith the mother organisation. This means that, if the platformis too interconnected with the mother organisation it will stillbe strained by its structure, whilst it is neither beneficial tothe organisation if the platform is too disconnected. The keymessage is to find a balance for joint value (ibid.).

However, new product development is foremost generatedby customer integration, and it is the foundation for the DoubleDiamond model. This model is about screening the market,and gain a better understanding of customer needs with aminimised effort, in order to generate new customer value(Business Org. Developer, 2021; Sr Manager Business De-veloper, 2021; Design Director, 2021a).

Currently, many organisations are gradually implementingsoftware into their products, which also applies to heavyindustries such as car companies. This change drive is sourcedfrom customer requirements, who demands high functionalityand quick delivery. These traits requires an organisation to beadoptable and operate at a high speed (Relese-train Engineer,2021; Business Org. Developer, 2021). According to Relese-train Engineer (2021), this motivated Volvo Cars to implementagile methodology into their organisational structure. BusinessOrg. Developer (2021) describes their product as a softwareon wheels.

To summarise this chapter, there is no saying that agile

methodology is the key for organisational success. A softwareorganisation can act perfectly agile, but for hardware develop-ers, it all comes down for an enterprise to find its individualbest-fit. The organisation can have a more flexible approach,whilst other departments, such as the production, needs a morestrict structure. An enterprise needs to design its organisationalstructure in relation to its customer and what product they willproduce (CEO, 2021; Sr Manager Business Developer, 2021;Project Manager, 2021; Business Area Manager RD, 2021;Relese-train Engineer, 2021). For example, Relese-train Engi-neer (2021) means that Volvo approaches agile methodology,but choose to not include the testing and validation functioninto their agile teams. However, agile methodology is aboutadopting and being flexible. A higher degree of customerintegration plants resilience, which provides an enterprisewith a higher resistance towards market dynamics (BusinessOrg. Developer, 2021). In that sense, the following sectionwill further go into the essential role of internal and externalintegration.

4) Internal and external integration: The society is in aconstant change and it is getting more and more globalised.Aligned with this, the generic competition increases sharplywhich forces enterprises to show their fighting disposition. Anenterprise that wants to stay in the front edge must be ableto mange speed and change. Design Director (2021b) quoteda manager at Toyota saying ”Everything breaks in the rule of3 and 10”. An essential component for maintaining the twolatter is through customer integration. Customer integrationassures an enterprise in two ways. First, it secures that theoutcome is actually useful for the customer. Second, if it turnsout that the customer is dissatisfied with the final product,customer integration underwrites the enterprise a guarantee fortheir joint decision making. The idea with customer integrationis to avoid the ’black-box’, and through close collaborationdeliver a customised product (Business Org. Developer, 2021;Strategist, 2021).

It is argued that the customer is the most important part of anenterprise. By that, an enterprise needs to understand customerdemands and its market (Business Org. Developer, 2021;Strategist, 2021; Sr Manager Business Developer, 2021). Noronly is it important for a B2B to understand its direct customer,but it also needs to have a perception of its customer’scustomer (Business Org. Developer, 2021; Strategist, 2021).

Customer integration is beneficial during long deliverytimes. It facilitates meeting customer demands in a constantchanging market. The market and customer goes hand in hand,so when the market changes direction, the customer does soas well. It is of high value for an enterprise to have a closecollaboration with its customer to follow market dynamics andrequirement modifications, to avoid falling behind. Customerintegration provides the organisation with resources and keepsthe enterprise on track (Business Org. Developer, 2021; Strate-gist, 2021). Though, it seems to be two-sided whether thereis a limit for involving the customer too much into the valuechain. Too much customer integration increases the risk foran enterprise to lose its ’know-how’ (Project Manager, 2021).


Another drawback could be if an enterprise aims towardsselling a product to a diversified customer base, a customisedproduct can then be unattractive for other customers (BusinessOrg. Developer, 2021). Yet, the positive outcome overrides thenegative (Sr Manager Business Developer, 2021; Strategist,2021; Business Org. Developer, 2021; CEO, 2021).

Customer integration is about joint problem solving andbeing flexible. In-house operations increase an organisation’sflexibility (Business Org. Developer, 2021; Business AreaManager RD, 2021). Business Area Manager RD (2021)argues that a low number of subcontractors is beneficial topromote agile method, since it decreases the organisation’s de-pendency on external suppliers and delivery. At a small scale,the inborn communication across an organisation falls natu-rally. Whilst, as an organisation grows, the cross-functionalcollaboration becomes suffering. In turn, the NPD rate sinks(Business Org. Developer, 2021; Business Area Manager RD,2021).

As aforementioned, to generate new product development,an enterprise can build an external platform that is somewhatunattached to the mother organisation. Incumbent enterprisesoften contain a high bureaucracy that limits new thinking.External platforms enable an incumbent to focus on NPD andstay in the front edge (Design Director, 2021a). New productdevelopment is born through creativeness, and creativeness iscreated by close collaboration. Having a close interferencegains a deeper understanding, that in turn, supports the out-come being more valuable. Aligned with this, an enterpriseapproaching open innovation fosters speed (Business Org. De-veloper, 2021; Strategist, 2021). Open innovation promotesexchanging knowledge internally and externally (Design Di-rector, 2021a). The winning traits are speed and engagement(Strategist, 2021; Business Org. Developer, 2021; Sr ManagerBusiness Developer, 2021). Strategist (2021) describes this as”claim the space”, which means that one take ownership beforeit is in place.

It is not an easy fix to maintain cross-functional collabo-ration at a large scale, yet it is not impossible. It all comesdown to building an organisational structure that rimes withthe balance between customisation and standardisation, andon top of this a mindset that supports this layout (CEO,2021). An enterprise is built upon trust and it essential tobuild a foundation that invites and enables cross-functionalcollaboration (Strategist, 2021; CEO, 2021; Project Manager,2021; Relese-train Engineer, 2021; Design Director, 2021a;Design Director, 2021b). According to Strategist (2021) andDesign Director (2021a), Doberman’s success is built uponthree components; money, quality and well-being.

An organisation can we viewed as a network containingseveral actors with interconnections. Each actor is a sourcefor knowledge and experience. Having a cross-functionalcollaboration is one heavy ground-stone for working effi-ciently and hence utilise seated capacity. Knowledge-sharingis a joint profit. Commonly, each team should contain allcompetence that are of necessity to transform an idea intoa product and deliver it to its market. However, this interfaceis more feasible at a small scale due to its close collaboration(Business Org. Developer, 2021; Strategist, 2021). To enable

cross-functional integration at a large scale, an enterprise canwork in design sprints. This implies with breaking downthe whole project into sprints. At the end of a sprint, allteams gather for exchanging knowledge by presenting a demoshowing their recent output. This is an essential part in cross-functional integration, it increases the sense of belonging andappreciation (Design Director, 2021b).

Broadly speaking, the workforce should reflect the market-place. An organisation benefits by including different kind ofpeople, with different kind of background, competence andsuch. In that sense, an enterprise should utilise the power ofcustomer integration and cross-functional integration (CEO,2021; Design Director, 2021a).

V. DISCUSSION

In this section, findings from the analysis are discussed inrelation to theories. The structure follows the same sequenceas the analysis to clarify the outcome of the research questions.First by a discussion of how a start-up transform into a scale-up, which then leads us in to the trade-off between stan-dardisation and customisation. Further on, the organisationalstructure is discussed in relation to scalability, and finallyhighlights the role of internal and external integration. Last,a discussion of sustainability is brought forward.

A. Start-up to scale-up, the trade-off between standardisationand customisation

In the recent past, literature concerning scale-up is vagueand a clear definition is not present. In this study, scale-up is outlined as organisational growth by an increased cus-tomer base with a limited amount of resources. From theinterviews, organisational scale up is described as utilisingexisting resources in a sustainable manner that enables anorganisation to deal with further customers simultaneously.In the literature, Hong et al. (2019) describes organisationalgrowth by presenting a five-step model. This model is a roadmap that describes key indicators of a start-up, followed bya couple of transitional stages, and subsequently identifies aprominence enterprise. As described in the five-step model,Northvolt is currently situated in the first stage, namely astart-up. Northvolt has a limited amount of target customersworking in close collaboration. However, Northvolt’s goal isto grow into an established enterprise and set benchmark inthe industry.

Yet, according to the literature, this transformation is notstraightforward and many enterprises do not seem to survive(ibid.). In order to move beyond the start-up stage and achievecompetitive performance, Hong et al. (ibid.) underlines theneed of implementing industry quality standards. Adding tothis, the interviewees postulate implementing standardisedprocesses or modules in order to move beyond the start-upstage. For Northvolt to grow sustainable and transform into anincumbent enterprise, it is obvious that standardised processesneeds to be considered and subsequently implemented. Still,despite the size of the organisation, Northvolt’s aim is tomaintain customised products.


During scale-up, it is understood that former customisedprocesses normally convert into standardised and replicableoperations. This transformation is driven by profitability gen-eration and benchmark establishment. A natural consequenceof this is commonly a reduced flexibility, and less customerfocus. Previous literature tends to solely highlight scale-up inthe context of innovation, it barely focus on growth in the eyeof customisation. The traditional view on scale-up is connectedto streamlined processes, efficiency, and hence standardisation.This angle differentiate a start-up and an incumbent enterpriseby its customised and standardised approach. Standardisa-tion implies with high efficiency and low modification rate,whilst customisation enables the organisation to follow marketdynamics and meet customer satisfaction. Customisation isabout tailor the outcome according to customer requirements,whereat this is common during the organisational birth. Stan-dardised modules are normally implemented when the cus-tomer base increases, and the organisation needs streamlinedprocesses in order to generate profitability.

However, the interviewees emphasised a new approach toscale-up. Namely, merge customised and standardised pro-cesses within an organisation, and extract traits that benefitsits operations. It is argued that the key is to set a founda-tion with standardised elements, and on top of this, featuresto customise. The traditional view of scale-up differentiatestandardisation and customisation. However, the new wayof approaching scale-up emphasise that Northvolt should beillustrated as an onion. Northvolt needs to identify its coreelements to standardise, and build flexible layers that enablecustomisation. An alternative way for Northvolt to movebeyond the start-up stage is to break down the organisationinto LEGO pieces. Each piece can be described as a moduleto standardise, and by its unique composition make roomfor customisation. However, regardless of its illustration, forNorthvolt to survive the transition from a start-up into agrowing enterprise, it is vital to distinguish which modulesto standardise and avoid reinventing the wheel. On top of this,Northvolt needs to identify what to maintain flexible in orderto maintain competitive advantage. In that sense, the key is tofind a balance between these traits, and create a best-fit thatbenefits the organisation. Also, it is argued to have a clearownership of this process, whereat it requires experience andexpertise.

Yet, enforcing both standardised and customised processinto Northvolt’s organisation needs further guidance. Fromthe interview with CEO (2021) it was emphasised that thesetwo operations needs to approach different operative system.Standardised processes should follow the production operativesystem, whilst the customised processes falls on the flexibleoperative system. The former one sets benchmarks, focuseson optimising processes, and aligned with the traditionalwaterfall hierarchy. The latter one facilitates flexibility throughcross-functional collaboration. In addition to this, it is of itshighest value to identify and specify KPIs that corresponds tothe operative system, meaning that these two systems needsdistinguished milestones and targets. However, although thisorganisational change is required for survival, both the five-step model and the interviews argue that balancing these

operative systems is not without friction.However, the organisational structure is never fixed. Due to

change drives and market dynamics, an organisation normallyoscillates between different structures.

B. The dynamic between organisational structures

Dynamics in the marketplace and change drives influencean organisations structure. Now more than ever, in orderto stay in the front edge, an organisation needs be able tomanage change. In turn, the enterprises must find new waysof working, as the traditional methods for product developmenttend to become outdated in a modern context.

Accordingly, literature highlights that the concept of master-ing project management has drastically changed within recentyears, whereat the traditional waterfall structure rarely endsup suitable in modern product development (Vakola, 2013).For Northvolt and other complex, large scale developers, theliterature advocates a project based organisation. The PBOstructure is beneficial to reach customer satisfaction due to itsadaptability and success in activity coordination (Lister, 2014).

However, it seems to be a joint vision in both theory andthe conducted interviews, that best practises for organisationalstructures are not to be found. Instead, each organisation isunique and requires a specific structure to match its presentsize and situation. Hence, one could argue that it is vitalfor Northvolt to have a flexible structure in parallel with awell-established change management which enables contin-uous updates as the organisation expands. Tonnquist (2014)underlines the importance of measuring performance, projectcomplexity, company culture and skill level within a team. Yet,the main aspects when formatting an organisational structureare argued to be; the demand of coordination and the degree ofspecialisation. With that in mind, all projects require its uniqueconfiguration, and as the project grows, the higher becomes thedemand of specialisation. Resulting further with an increasedcomplexity within the project structure. Hence, it becomescrucial to find a balance between unity and specialisation inthe structure.

Moreover, scaling up is rather equivalent with a higherdegree of standardisation. But, regardless of whats gettingstandardised or not, one must ensure to have a well-establishedchange management together with an updated setting forupcoming standardisation. Such framework would enableNorthvolt to build their customer projects based on currentstandards, simultaneously as ensuring that future projects areup to date to meet their requirements. According to BusinessArea Manager RD (2021), Sr Manager Business Developer(2021), Strategist (2021), Design Director (2021a), and De-sign Director (2021b), this setting can be seen as a pendulumcommuting back and forth between establishment and practise.This, by first setting up a standard in the outer positionand implementing it in the other. The project structure thencommute align with the pendulum and avoids the risk of get-ting stuck or outdated. On the other hand, some intervieweeshighlighted the use of the pendulum concept within well-established organisations, whereat a platform functions as asub-unit to enable innovation and NPD.


Further on, the interviewees seemed to agree upon thebeneficial impact of an agile mindset. This, as agile tendsto enhance a business with increased flexibility and adapt-ability. Strict agile management is argued to facilitate fastchangeovers to match customer needs by its rapid feedbackloops and iterative approach. Hence, its non-linear thinkingseems to be suitable for Northvolt due to its high demand ofcomplex problem solving (Copola Azenha, Aparecida Reis,and Leme Fleury, 2020). On the other hand, the agile approachis barely tested within large-scale organisation, and literaturefor this is lacking. Hence, one could argue that there is a risk inpractising agile for an enterprise such as Northvolt. Yet, for anindustry in rapid change, it becomes crucial to form a flexibleorganisational structure to maintain competitive advantage.

What is found in the interviews is that modern productdevelopment benefits by having an established change man-agement. Hence, a hierarchy lead organisation might gainby having the agile mindset in consideration. Accordingly, itstrengthen the cooperation, both within each team but alsocross-functional in the project portfolio. Yet, the literature forthis remains scarce, making it hard to draw any well-foundedconclusion regarding its fitness. With that said, both the litera-ture and the interviewees highlights SAFe as a suitable bridgebetween traditional and agile management (Varma, 2015).Hence, SAFe could be argued to be applicable on Northvolt asit maintain its rather sub-optimised project structure. This wasfurther strengthen by the findings in the interviews, advocatingSAFe to be successfully used within Volvo Cars.

Last but not least, the interviewees seemed to agree uponthat a structure benefits by having responsibilities and decisionmaking pushed down the hierarchy. Individual ownershipenables a team to become goal orientated and harmonised,and releases unnecessary work from higher management. Inregards to this, an agile mindset both requires and providesa higher degree of dedication among the workforce. Also, apushed down ownership benefit by a high degree of agilethinking, but do also make way for an increased cross-functional integration. Hence, Northvolt would benefit byhaving the ownership further down in the hierarchy regardlessof its organisational structure and working procedures.

Argued in both the literature and the analysis, OCRs endup suitable for identification of measurable items and KPIs.Hence, Northvolt would benefit by an established OCR setupas a part of their standardisation. Accordingly, this couldstrengthen the approach of individual ownership in the projectorganisation, and help the project teams to become self-driven. However, Business Area Manager RD (2021) pinpointsthe importance of contra measurable KPIs, as the outcomeelsewise risk to generate a tunnel vision - causing more harmthan good for the project. Also, the settlement of KPIs is adynamic process, just as the organisational structure.

C. Internal and external integration, key for customisation

”Change is the only constant in life”. This saying wasmade by Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher. This isstill accurate, and nevertheless applicable in today’s dynamicmarket. From the conducted interviews it was emphasised

that an enterprise who wants to stay in the front edge, needsto be designed appropriate to manage change and speed.In this aspect, customer integration is argued to be a dealbreaker. As understood, Northvolt has a close collaborationwith its automotive customers, and the vision is to maintain aclose customer interaction regardless of its organisational size.Having in mind that Northvolt would benefit being dividedinto two operative systems, customer integration is foremostapplicable to the flexible operative system that focuses oncustomisation.

Northvolt has long delivery times to its customers, andto avoid the ’black box’, the collaboration is iterative. Thisenables Northvolt to meet customer demands in a constantchanging market. Yet, it is argued that a too close interactioncan adventure the organisation’s ’know-how’. However, whenit comes down to the end, the positive outcomes overridethe negative. Customer integration provides Northvolt withresources and joint problem solving, which is beneficial duringscale-up. Yet, the organisation will not benefit having thislayout if the desire is to scale sustainable. As aforementioned,it is an organisational threshold transforming customised oper-ations into standardised. Yet, this is vital to survive beyond or-ganisational birth. It is a synergy between external and internalintegration. Internal integration, or cross-functional integra-tion, is about the creation of a process-oriented structure thatenhances an enterprise’s internal exchange of information andknowledge. The five-step model argues that cross-functionalintegration is fundamental for complex problem solving. Thisstructure sets the foundation for meeting customer demandsdue to its positive impact on NPD.

Northvolt has a high degree of customer integration, butis lacking in field of cross-functional integration. Northvoltwould benefit in having a digital platform for knowledge-sharing or a structure that supports the exchange of informa-tion. Due to market dynamics, Kang et al. (2020) argues thata high degree of collaboration and communication increaseNPD and in turn, decrease the risk for not meeting customerdemands etc. This especially as Northvolt works in long-term customer collaborations, and the market is in constantchange. Apart from its positive impact on NPD, CFI and CIare identified as key element for supply chain resilience. It isunderstood that the internal speed qualifies the speed in thesupply chain.

Northvolt is built up by numerous of nationalities whichsupports the organisation in all kind of ways. As it is empha-sised in previous section to push down the ownership, eachteam should contain all competencies that are of necessity toaccomplish its targets. On one hand, Northvolt is managed byvarious nationalities, but on the other hand, women is still aminority. In general terms, the workforce should reflect themarketplace, and the outcome benefits by having a mixedgroup of people.

In previous section, the signification of clear and reach-able KPIs is argued. Currently, the CPM team has continu-ously budget updates and customer satisfaction measurements.However, a throughout KPI framework is lacking. From theliterature, common sayings are ”What you measure is whatyou get” and ”What gets measure gets attention” (Cocca


and Alberti, 2010). For Northvolt to reach organisationalperformance, it is urgent to implement PMS. The PMS isabout reflecting on previous actions, and systematic applyfruitful knowledge into future operations. In that sense, PMScan help Northvolt identify profitable actions to convert intostandardised processes, and pari passu, actions that are neededto maintain flexible.

Aligned with clear targets and milestones, it is emphasisedto push down the ownership within the organisation. Whilepushing down the ownership, the workforce needs to havea distinct idea of where they are heading and underlyingexpectations. Sourced from the literature and findings from theinterviews, it is argued that workforce motivation and level ofindividual effort are established by having a visible and clearway forward. The PMS can be approached by the Performanceprism (PP) made by Neely, Adams, and Kennerley (2002).The PP is a framework for managing long term success inan operating environment with multiple stakeholders, whichis applicable for Northvolt. This framework motivates why anorganisation should consider close collaboration with externalactors, cross-functional integration, communication and lastly,the necessity to review what is being measured. When it comesto KPIs, Northvolt needs to question itself: ”Do we need it?”and ”Why do we need it?”. The answers to these questions aredynamic and need to be updated on a regular basis.

D. Reflections on sustainability

Sustainability is described as ”meeting the needs of thepresent without compromising the ability of future generationsto meet their needs”. To approach this concept, it is di-vided into three pillars; social, economical, and environmental(Grant, 2021). Adding to this, the United Nations created17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) to advance actionstowards a better future (Nations, 2020b).

However, this study has been focusing on scaling-up North-volt’s CPM department. As aforementioned, Northvolt’s mis-sion is to produce the world’s greenest batteries, and to set newsustainability benchmarks in the industry. By investigating inNorthvolt’s growth capabilities, a sustainability contributionhas been provided. Looking into the social perspective, theworkforce within a manufacturing enterprise is the foundationof the whole organisation. Findings from the case studyshowed that the workforce is driven by pushing down theownership in combination with clear targets and milestones.Also, it is argued that cross-functional collaboration togetherwith customer integration is key for creativeness. It all comesdown to creating a mindset that generates the workforce.

Further on, it was shown that few start-ups manage tosurvive beyond birth. In order to manage sustainable growth,it is crucial for an enterprise to implement industry qualitystandards and build a structure that enables cross-functional in-tegration. Hence, a scale-up needs to identify standardised andcustomised modules to become profitable and move beyondthe start-up stage. If an enterprise fails to overcome the start-up threshold, it will likewise affect its sustainability impact.As previously mentioned, Northvolt aims to grow and set new

sustainability benchmarks in the industry. Findings from thiscase study support Northvolt in reaching their goal by showinghow to scale-up the CPM department sustainable.

The following section presents key findings from the casestudy, and conceptualises the discussion through the researchquestions.

VI. CONCLUSION

This chapter presents findings from the conducted casestudy, whereat topics highlighted in the discussion act as abasis to address the research question.

The aim of this study has been to explore how to scale-up customer project management. This was encapsulated bya main research question, but addressed through three sub-questions. To explore the sub-questions, a case study wasconducted investigating current situation at Northvolt, bestpractice interviews were held, and a literature review. The firstsection aims to explore the first sub-question by looking intothe CPM ecosystem and identify its scale-up possibilities.

The concept of managing customer project management israrely seen in the theoretical body of knowledge. Hence, thisarea originates from project management, but with a deeperfocus on the customer. Customer project management, just asproject management, aims to facilitate a streamlined projectperformance. Customer projects benefit by having a flexibleorganisational structure adoptive for change. In addition tothis, a project facilitates by having an individual decisionmaking, meaning that the responsibilities are pushed downthe hierarchical ladder. Hence, individual ownership strengthsmotivation and enables the teams to become self propelled.Accordingly, an external department for standardisation seemsto allow the organisation to enhance flexibility even further.

Further on, this latter in combination with a pendulumthinking enables upcoming standards to be developed inparallel with the incumbent organisation. In turn, the projectmanagement can secure that all project stages are up to dateto meet its current obstacles. Also, having a transparent rela-tionship between management and customer projects supportscollaboration and workflow.

From this, the following section aims to explore the secondsub-question by clarifying how the CPM team can maintain asufficient exchange of knowledge during scale-up. As afore-mentioned, all organisations favor by having a healthy flowof communication, and especially in the context of productdevelopment. A well-established CFI facilitates communica-tion on several levels. First, a sufficient CFI enables theCPM to maintain communication between the managers andtheir projects. Hence, all teams are aligned and decisions aretaken on an incorporated basis. Second, CFI facilitates theexchange of knowledge internally in the projects but alsocross-functional and the team members are able to avoiddrawbacks. Third, CFI enables customer integration which inturn benefits NPD. With a market in constant change, NPDis a key component to maintain competitive advantage. Also,due to market dynamics and change drives, it is common thatestablished organisations oscillate between different structures.


Moreover, it is found that scale-up is rather equivalent withan increased demand of communication and the characteristicsof a small-scale are hard to maintain. Hence, communicationshould be seen as an enabling factor of success with structuresthat facilitates internal and external integration for a wealthygrowth.

The final sub-question provide findings in how customerproject management can maintain customised operations dur-ing scale-up. It is emphasised that internal and external in-tegration are key components for customisation. As there isa synergy between internal and external integration, and itsimpact on NPD, it is emphasised that an enterprise shouldmake an effort in having an organisational structure that gainsCFI. As argued by the interviewed, it is shown that agilemethods facilitates CFI.

Many organisations aim to scale-up and become moreprofitable. For a start-up to survive beyond birth, it is obviousthat customised processes needs to convert into standardised toan extent that benefits the organisation. The trade-off betweencustomisation and standardisation is individual, the key is tofind a best-fit. Hence, scaling-up an organisation implies withidentifying what processes that needs to be standardised andpari passu customised. The organisation should be viewedas an onion, having a core with standardised modules thatprevent them from reinventing the wheel, and flexible layersthat enable customisation.

Enhanced customisation can be reached by implementingPMS in combination with PP. Reflecting on previous actionsand enforce this into future operations will provide an en-terprise with a fundamental basis creating their organisationalonion. The KPI framework should correspond to the two oper-ative systems, whereat the framework is dynamic and needs tobe questioned on a regular basis. Thus, the flexible operativesystem allows for customisation and should be considered asit gain from a sufficient CFI. This does not solely supportan enterprise to reach higher performance, but also enablespushing down the ownership.

At last, findings presented above together with previousdiscussion, stand for a foundation to approach how to scale upcustomer project management. First and foremost, scale up isconnected to standardised modules. As a start-up grows, theneed of streamlined processes and higher efficiency increases.However, there is still a necessity to maintain some operationscustomised to follow market dynamics and customer require-ments. In the aspect of customisation, it is a synergy betweenexternal and internal integration.

An enterprise benefits by having two operative systems; aproduction operative system and a flexible operative system.The latter allows for customisation, hence the structure shouldsupport CFI. Adding to this, it is about creating a mindsetwithin the workforce whereat the ownership is pushed downin combination with clear milestones and targets. However,the market is in constant change and the need to have a well-established change management is conclusive. It is commonthat an enterprise oscillate between different organisationalstructures, and the need to have a external platform to generatenew-thinking is key.

VII. STUDY CONTRIBUTION

This thesis contributes in two following ways; a theoreticalcontribution and an practical contribution. The theoreticalcontribution revolves around scale-up within CPM, whilst thepractical contribution concerns how this can be approached byan enterprise such as Northvolt. At last, a review of limitationsand further research is presented.

A. Theoretical contribution

In accordance with Monteiro (2019), Vaughan-Lee et al.(2018), and M.Barker, Reid, and W.Schall (2016), a cleardefinition of scale-up is lacking in the literature. This thesisbrings theoretical contribution to literature by improving theconceptual definition of scale-up and putting it into a newcontext - scaling up customer project management. First, thedifference between a start-up and a scale-up comes downto the threshold between customisation and standardisation.A growing organisation needs to identify which modulesto standardise, to avoid reinvent the wheel, and distinguishwhich processes that benefits the organisation to maintaincustomised. However, this trade-off is individual whereat anorganisation needs to find its best-fit.

Moreover, within the context of leading change, it is em-phasised by Lewin (1947) and Kotter’s Eight Step LeadingChange Model (2012) that the final step within the changeprocess is to establish the change into the organisation so thatit becomes a permanent way in doing businesses. This thesiscontributes to this litterateur by reinforcing the necessity todeal with change and manage organisational dynamics. Furtheron, literature regarding change management underlines thenecessity of dealing with behavioral and administrative issuesrelated to changes in processes, relationships and employee’swork within an organisation, strengthen by Hong et al. (2019)and Cao, Clarke, and Lehaney (2004). This thesis bringstheoretical contribution by intensifying the concept of changemanagement by connecting it with the dynamics in organisa-tional structures and the need of an external platform. Changemanagement is fueled by change drivers and market dynamicsand an external platform makes room for new thinking, thisfacilitates the organisation with NPD and hence to maintaincompetitive advantage. Adding to this, an external platformsupports complex problem solving, and benefits by havingCFI.

At last, this thesis bring theoretical contribution to literatureconcerning PMS by putting it into another context. Formerliterature by (Cocca and Alberti, 2010; Neely, Adams, andKennerley, 2002) defines the PMS and presents ways tooperate with it. However, this thesis argues that an organi-sation needs to find its best-fit to operate with performancemeasurement, and that different parts of the organisation callsfor different systems.

B. Practical contribution

The practical contribution of this thesis addresses how toscale up Northvolt’s customer project management depart-ment, focusing on how to maintain a customised outcome.


First and foremost, it is a clear trade-off between standardisa-tion and customisation during scale-up. A growing enterpriseneeds to implement standardised modules in order to beprofitable. Northvolt is currently identified as a start-up witha handful of customers working in close collaboration. Yet,Northvolt aims to set sustainable benchmarks in the industryand produce the world’s greenest batteries. Hence, it is obviousthat they need to distinguish which processes that can bestandardised, and which processes to maintain flexible toenable customisation. In that sense, the organisational structureshould be designed as an onion - a core with standardisedmodules surrounded by flexible layers. Based on the findings,this action requires competence and expertise. Northvolt isequipped with a Blueprint team focusing on this in particular,concentrated on making a prototype of the production thatin turn will support the enterprise to easily build up a newmanufacturing plant. However, the necessity of the Blueprintseems to be lacking within the organisation, whereat this thesisunderlines the significance of this department for a sustainablegrowth.

On top of this ’onion’, Northvolt needs to build a mindsetthat generates and motivates its workforce. This mindset iscreated by pushing down the ownership in combination withclear targets and milestones. Currently, the CPM team hassome diffuse KPIs to reach their targets. However, there isan urgency to implement KPIs that are aligned with theiroperations and benefits the CPM team in achieving their goals.Based on the findings, the settlement of KPIs is a dynamicprocess which needs to be updated on a regular basis. Also,it is shown that each KPI needs an contra KPI to make theoutcome meaningful. Northvolt needs to question itself: ”Dowe need it?” and ”Why do we need it?”.

Another aspect that is stated to be crucial for an organisationto survive beyond birth is CFI. This capacity seems to be lessprioritised as an enterprise grows. For Northvolt to scale-upsustainably, they need to have a well-functioned communica-tion across the organisation. The importance of knowledge-sharing is not only essential to make the process more ef-ficient, but also to help the Blueprint team identifying whatto bring to future plants. The CPM team is divided in siloswhereat the CFI is lacking. Each project brings experience,and it is essential that the CPM team builds a structure thatsupports exchange in lessons learned. CFI facilitates customerintegration and fosters speed, which is identified as a key forcompetitive advantage. As the CPM team has a deep-rootedcollaboration with its customers, it is highly accurate that theyrespond to this internally.

From the case study it is understood that an enterpriseis dynamic whereat it oscillates between different structures.To foster NPD, it is common that an incumbent enterprisehas an external platform. As this platform establish, it willsubsequently be consolidated into the mother organisation. Theprocess can be illustrated as a cradle moving back and forthbetween structures. As aforementioned, Northvolt is identifiedas a start-up, and it can be recognised as the external platformmissing the mother organisation. For Northvolt to move be-yond the start-up stage and become the mother organisation,they need to build their organisational onion and a mindset

that generates the workforce to grow sustainable.

C. Limitations and future researchAs this case study was about how to scale up Northvolt’s

CPM department, with a focus of how to maintain a cus-tomised output, this should be seen as a conceptual try-out.In that sense it can hopefully be used as a starting point forfurther investigation within the field of CPM scale-up and therole of customisation. The case study was performed on behalfof Northvolt, a lithium-ion battery manufacturing enterpriselocated in Sweden, and accomplished by a number of bestpractice interviews together with a literature review.

Further on, the data collection has been analysed and hencelimitations are presented in the following. As the case studywas performed together with an enterprise this brings less gen-eralisation to the outcome. Also, the case study was performedin a close collaboration with Northvolt which might havetweaked the result. Further on, the time-frame restricted theauthors to dive further into the problem area which obstructeda throughout analysis such as implications in how to pushdown the ownership, how to create a suitable and valuable KPIframework, how to implement and operate a well-functionedCFI, and dynamics in organisational structures. It would befavorable to investigate these topic during a longer timeperiod, and hence explore how the organisation develops andreaches different levels of maturity. As previously mentioned,Northvolt is scaling up rapidly whereat this case study wasbased on the organisational structure that was collected in thebeginning of the work. Accordingly, some information mightbe out dated, which is of importance to have in mind whenreading this thesis.

Moreover, the number of best practice interviews werelimited, affecting the generalisation of the study. Also, multipleinterviewees came from the same organisation which mighthave brought the result some skewness. Additionally, theauthors’ choice of interviewees might have caused the resultto become weighted and hence diminished its generalisation.The generalisation of this thesis would benefit by investigat-ing further start-ups and organisations with similar traits asNorthvolt. This study investigates the concept of NPD froma product perspective. However, as NPD can be seen from abigger perspective, including process, position and paradigm,this should be considered in the analysis and result.

Within the literature, customer project management is lack-ing. Thereby, this thesis was conducted based on elementsfrom general project management, but with a focus on thecustomer. The elements were further reflected against theconducted case study at Northvolt. In accordance with that,there are several areas that differ drastically from theory topractise. This thesis was conducted from a broad variety ofresearch relevant for customer projects and scale up. However,some investigated topics were slightly out of the thesis’s mainarea of focus. Thus, these areas were necessary to investigatein order to generate a foundation for upcoming topics and thequestionnaire in the interviews. Accordingly, the authors didhave this in mind during the entire research, and irrelevantfindings that did not directly contribute to answer the researchquestions were excluded in the analysis and conclusion.


Further on, based on the highlighted limitations togetherwith thoughts evolved during the case study, this thesispresents topics for future research:

• First, organisational structures normally oscillate betweendifferent platforms. In that sense, it would be of interestto investigate best practices in how and when to do thistransition.

• Second, this thesis highlights the necessity of valuableKPIs, and that these needs to be updated on a regularbasis. However, it would be of interest to investigate howto ensure that the KPIs are of value to the organisation.

• Third, it is an obvious trade-off between customisationand standardisation, and an enterprise that wants to movebeyond birth needs to implement industry quality stan-dards. However, it would be of interest to investigate howto identify what to standardise and pari passu customise.

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VIII. APPENDIX

A. Interview Topics

Semi-structured questions structured in accordance with the research questions in the best practise interviews:

How to manage Customer Project Management during rapid scale up?

1) How would you describe current marketplace?2) How much experience do you have in company/department growth? (1-5)3) Do you work with growth on a daily basis?4) Is you company/department in an expansion phase today?5) Are you planning to grow in the nearest future (5 years)?

• if yes, how?• Do you have any strategy to proceed?

6) Change is happening all the time and different organisations can have different change drivers such as threats, competitionand possibility to grow. What are you change drivers?

7) How do you respond to market dynamics? Threats and competitive pressure8) Are there any key factors for growth according to you? Or is it industry-specific?9) How is your work dependent on market dynamics, threats and competitive pressure?

10) Is there anything during your “growth” that you today would have done differently?11) How do you manage these challenges?12) One implication with growth (according to literature) is to maintain focus of key projects simultaneously as operating

with cross-functional integration/collaboration.• Do you agree/Disagree on this? (1-5)• How much does your org. operate to avoid/prevent this? (1-5)

13) Another implication highlighted in literature is the complexity in maintaining continuous development of products whilereaching economies of scale.

• Do you have any experience of this? (1-5) (1-5)14) Have you/ your organization been able to specify pitfalls/drawbacks that could have been avoided during your work with

growth?

How is customer project management managed?

15) Do you have experience of working/managing with customer projects? (1-5)• If yes, How do you work with customer projects• How do you develop these? (1-5)

16) Do you work in long-term relationships with your customers?• If yes, why?• If no, how come?

17) In your opinion, are there any main obstacles for growth in customer projects?• How do you think an organisation should work to cope with these?

How is knowledge transferred between projects?

18) Are you running projects in parallel? How many? (1-5)19) Do you have any specific project structure? (project portfolio etc)?

• How do you work with scarce resources? In relation to parallel projects• Risks?

20) How do you communicate in-between projects and departments? Do you use any type of method such as agile methodsor likewise?

21) How pleased are you with the communication between projects in the portfolio? (1-5)22) How do you transfer knowledge between departments?

• Do you have any best practise for this?• Do you work with cross-functional integration?


23) Having cross-functional collaboration is considered as a valuable capability to maintain competitive advantage, wouldyou agree to that? Cross-functional collaboration = a system to align departments to increase knowledge sharing etc.

• If yes, why?• If no, why not?

24) Are you pleased with how knowledge is transferred between projects in the portfolio? (1-5)• If yes, why

How is customer project management customised?

25) Do you have any experience of working in close collaboration with your customers? Such as customer integration (1-5)26) To what extent do you involve your customer in your project work? (1-5)27) Customer integration is known for reducing costs and increasing productivity (since the customer is seen as a resource),

what is your take on customer integration?• Do you think that only a certain industry needs to keep focus on customer integration?• Do you think a high customer integration would increase customization?• Do you find any risk with customer integration?• Do you think a customer can be too integrated?• How important do you think it is to integrate your customer in customer projects? (1-5)

28) Do you work with NPD? New product development• If so, what sort of method do you use? Agile, Lean, Stage gate etc• Would you say that NPD benefit from customer integration?

29) A concept that is constantly repeating in literature is “open innovation”, have you heard about that before?• If yes, how would you describe how your company operate with open innovation?

30) How do you work with innovation in general?31) How do you mange innovation in your work?32) Do you rate innovation as a main factor for success?

• If not, explain the concept!• Now, how do you work with it?


B. Internal Documents

Internal documents and information gathered at the case company:

Confidential

TRITA ITM-EX 2021:129

www.kth.se