The mobile gaming industry is a fast-growing and lucrative market, which has surpassed the money generated by consoles and PC games, and the market is going to grow continuously. Games are produced by teams that need to have diverse technical and creative skills and competences as well as good understanding of customer expectations. Nonetheless, there is limited literature on mobile game development teams, and particularly on the management practices and organizational structures that support their functioning. Therefore, this research sets out to discover how organizational environment affects the effectiveness of game development teams.
Since this study only focuses on the influence of organizational environment, the team effectiveness model introduced by McShane and Von Glinow was adopted. The thesis divides organizational environment into organizational structure and leadership styles for further study. Literature about team design and team processes is also discussed in this study from in the context of mobile game development. Finally, a theoretical framework was drawn based on the reviewed literature. The empirical part of this research was conducted as a single case study. Empirical data was collected through interviews in the case company with top management and team leaders, who are involved in game development and decision-making process. The case company's games have occupied the top positions in top grossing list in AppStore, which makes it interesting for the empirical investigation.
The findings of this thesis explain that organizational environment affects team design gradually. It is like a pyramid where the foundation is a flat organization which helps the company with team composition. In the middle of the pyramid is the stable organizational environment which helps with team stability. On top of the pyramid, the organic organizational structure and servant leadership, which is built upon flat and stable organizational environment, helps development teams to be autonomous. Right members in teams, high extent of team stability and team autonomy altogether have positive effects on team processes and in turn increase team effectiveness.In addition, a balance between autonomy and control is a critical issue for managers to consider. In this study, some practicalities learned from the case study were provided. Thus, this study provides implications for mobile gaming companies by investigating teams' functioning responsive for development of successfully games
