agile software development

Agile software development is a collection of processes and a mindset focused on incrementally and rapidly delivering parts of a system. It often consists of short periods of activity of a week or fortnight (called sprints) that focuses on an end-to-end slice of the sytem functionality (a {[use case}}). Each sprint may cross multiple parts of the system and involve a combination of user interface and backend code.

In some ways agile methods can be seen as having a similar spirit to the incremental development proccesses favoured in interface design. However, the piecemeal nature of agile methods can make it difficult to achieve coherence and consistency of user experience.