DistributedDevelopment

From APIDesign

Style of development that assembles the final application from pieces produced by many independent groups working on their own schedule, on their own projects. Greatly reduces time to market. Reduces total cost of ownership, yet increases the unpredictability of schedule - One needs to be ready that downstream projects fail to produce their deliverables on time and adapt own schedule to that.

This style of development also heavily relies on concept of backward compatibility. Only if, things that used to work in previous version of a library, continue to work in new version, one can upgrade pieces of a system without being afraid of destabilizing its previous functionality.