Practical insight about choice of methodology in large complex software projects in Norway

The objective of this paper is to provide practical insight about choice of methodology in large complex software projects in Norway. To achieve the purpose, we conducted interviews in software development organizations in Norway. Overall, we conducted twenty-one software practitioners' interviews from twenty-one different software development organizations. Findings suggested that agile methodologies are not preferred choice when developing large-scale projects, safety critical software projects and for projects in which requirements are known at upfront. Findings revealed that waterfall methodologies are more suitable for those kinds of projects. Waterfall approaches have many benefits therefore it is not recommended to discard it completely for sake of agile methods. On the basis of the findings and discussion, we recommend using combination of agile and waterfall approaches together. In this way, benefits of certain features from both methodologies can be used according to type of the project.