Should companies aiming for innovation organize their projects according to agile or waterfall work practices? We studied three different teams in Laerdal Medical, which vary in terms of being organized according to agile vs. waterfall work practices. Based on a series of interviews and contrary to the theory of agile work practices, our findings suggest that the waterfall work practices produced the most innovative team, at least in the short term. Teams organized according to agile work practices faced two generic challenges that impacted their innovative capacity: the organization of IT developers and the handling of the company's technological heritage (legacy).
