Abstract
Background: There is a need for better collaboration between business and development units in product producing organizations, within in-house development. This need has emerged because developers would often know which ideas that are possible to implement and which are not, while business representatives have insights into the customer needs, the competitors and the market. Consequently, both units would benefit from the other’s insights, and a closer collaboration can be achieved through effective and appropriate coordination. Aim: The aim of the thesis is to investigate the challenges between business and development in agile software development, and identify possible solutions to the challenges. Additionally, the aim is also to investigate how task uncertainty, task interdependence and size of work unit change when business and development merge into one team. The scope of this thesis is coordination between business and development in a BizDev team, where BizDev simply is a team consisting of both business representatives and developers. Considering coordination is achieved through coordination mechanisms, such as meetings, those areas are examined. Method: A qualitative case study was conducted in an organization where business and development merged into a BizDev team. Data was collected by conducting 11 interviews, observing 51 meetings and 21 entire days with the team, and gathering various documentation. Results: The results revealed that there were 24 coordination mechanisms present in the team. These could be grouped into three main categories; impersonal, personal and group mode. The most prominent challenges they experienced were differing needs in the working environment, they were not present at the same meetings or used the same methodologies or tools, and their team dynamics were of a working group, not a team. Conclusion: It is possible to increase the collaboration between business and development by changing the implementation of the daily stand-up meeting, creating a team meeting that includes all members, safeguard and arrange for the use of story mapping, and facilitate for informal ad hoc conversations because they create speed and fast decision-making. These changes could lead to less status reporting, a stronger team spirit, a common understand of what is being creating, and lead to speed and fast decision-making. Furthermore, merging business and development into one team lead to increase in all the factors; how task uncertainty, task interdependence and size of work unit.