A Study of Creativity and Innovation within Agile Project Management : A Quasi-experimental Case Study of a Scrum Team

This master thesis has been conducted at Uppsala University and was performed in collaboration with the company Alten Sverige AB during a time period of twenty weeks.The purpose of the study was to enhance the creative and innovational output of agile project teams within the organization by revising and improving an existing management system. The thesis was divided into two main phases. The first phase had a theoretical focus and included a literature study with the objective to create a knowledge baseline from academia, compare it with the existing system, and to revise and improve the management system. The second phase had an empirical and consisted of a quasi-experimental case study of a scrum team and implementation of the management system with the objective to get information of how the studied team perceived the improved system.The literature study looked into three main topics; creativity, innovation, and agility. The topics was studied to see the connections between them and to find common barriers and enablers for creative and innovational output. The case study observed and interacted with the scrum team to gather information about their current work process. Their work process later altered during the quasi-experimental implementation stage based on the new requirements within the updated management system. To see if the team’s perception of the work process had changed a questionnaire was answered before and after the work process was altered. The questionnaire was answered by the studied team and a reference group to increase the studies validity.The results from the literature study showed that there were several characteristics of creativity, innovation and agility that was considered to be either enablers or barriers and a few characteristics which saw contradictions in the literature. The findings from the study was compared, analyzed and mapped out into topics, sub-topics, and requirements within the management system, which was simultaneously updated. The results from the implementation stage and the documentation of the team’s changed perceptions showed that eleven characteristics identified as enabler was strengthened by the empirical findings, one enabler was weakened (deadlines), and one new enabler emerged (direct contact with external expertise or customer). Regarding the barriers, four of them was strengthened, one was weakened (diversity), and one new barrier was discovered (insufficient documentation)