Tanja E. Havstorm

About Tanja E. Havstorm

Dr. Tanja Elina Havstorm is an Assistant Professor (Senior lecturer) at the Department of Informatics at Örebro University in Örebro, Sweden. She also serves as the Program director for the Bachelor program in Information Systems (Systems Analysis). Her expertise is in Agile Methods, Project Management, Requirements Engineering, and AI in software development. She belongs to the research environment Centre for Empirical Research on Information Systems (CERIS), where she is an active member of the Software Development Management research group. Havstorm, apart from her work in academia, has been working as a management consultant, agile coach, and educator in the tech industry, focusing on agile transformations and requirements engineering. Since 2026, Havstorm is part of the steering board of ÖrebroTech.

Research

Her PhD dissertation, Cargo Cult in Agile Software Development (2023), examined how software teams sometimes adopt agile methods superficially due to cargo cult behavior, reducing the effectiveness of agile practices. Grounded in Work Motivation Theory and Social Action Theory, this research established a foundation for her broader interest in how individuals and organizations adopt, adapt, and sustain new ways of working. Since then, her research has evolved across multiple levels of analysis, from software developers and agile teams to Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and agile coaches, and more recently to organizational leadership and capabilities. She investigates how agile practices evolve in real-world settings, with a current focus on how AI tools, particularly large language models such as GPT, are reshaping software development workflows, professional roles, and team dynamics. Her research examines how integrating AI into agile software development influences decision-making, collaboration, information security, and the emergence of new software development practices, drawing on theories such as Value-Based Compliance Theory to study responsible AI use.

More recently, Havstorm has expanded her research beyond agile software development to organizational agility, leadership, and resilience. She investigates how organizations in the public and private sectors build the capabilities needed to adapt to complexity, uncertainty, and rapid change. Drawing on VUCA and New Institutional Theory, her research explores how leadership, organizational capabilities, and institutional contexts enable organizations to sustain agile ways of working and successfully navigate digital transformation and organizational change.

Havstorm is currently part of the project “Consistency of GPT Models in Classifying Natural Language Requirements", which examines how GPT models classify software requirements using zero-shot and few-shot learning. The project contributes to AI-supported requirements engineering by evaluating the reliability, consistency, and practical applicability of large language models in real-world software development environments.

She has conducted research with international companies e.g., Epiroc, and public organizations e.g., Swedish Transport Agency. Havstorm regularly presents her research at leading international conferences, including HICSS, AMCIS, XP, ISD, ICSOB, and QUATIC. Her work has been published in journals such as IEEE Software, Information and Software Technology (IST), and the International Journal of Information Systems and Project Management (IJISPM). She also serves as a reviewer and program committee member for international conferences, including EASE, PROFES, and AMCIS, and reviews manuscripts for journals and conferences such as Information and Software Technology (IST), International Journal of Information Systems and Project Management (IJISPM), ICIS, and HICSS.

Teaching

Since 2014, Havstorm has taught a wide range of courses at Örebro University across undergraduate, master's, and doctoral levels. Her teaching focuses on systems and software development, agile project management, requirements engineering, and qualitative research methods. 

She has served as course manager for:

• IK100G – Introduction to systems development, basic level
• IK207G – Software Development Project with Scrum and Extreme Programming, intermediate level
• IK205G – Requirements Engineering, intermediate level
• IK462A – Setting Requirements in Information Security, advanced level
• IK444A – Qualitative Methods in Information Systems Research, advanced level
• 20IK047 – Literature Review in Informatics, doctoral level
• 20IK053 – Communication and Impact, doctoral level

Havstorm is also an experienced thesis supervisor, guiding numerous bachelor’s and master’s projects in topics such as project management, agile methods, DevOps, innovation in tech teams, information and cybersecurity, and requirements engineering.

Equality and Gender Mainstreaming

In addition to her research and teaching, Havstorm has contributed extensively to gender equality initiatives at Örebro University. As Gender Mainstreaming Representative for Informatics (2018–2021) and Project Manager of the Project for Equal Opportunity Within Informatics (2020–2021), she led initiatives to promote inclusive practices in education and research. She organized workshops, departmental seminars, and industry events in collaboration with networks such as #addher, focusing on gender equality and diversity in tech and STEM subjects in higher education.