Ad Hoc Development
Ad hoc development is an informal, unstructured approach to software development where solutions are created quickly and spontaneously to address immediate, specific problems without following a formal process or long-term planning. It often involves writing code on-the-fly, using temporary fixes, or bypassing standard procedures to meet urgent needs. This method is typically reactive and lacks documentation, testing, or consideration for scalability and maintainability.
Developers might use ad hoc development in emergency situations, such as fixing critical bugs under tight deadlines, prototyping ideas rapidly, or handling one-off tasks that don't justify a full development cycle. It's useful for quick problem-solving in environments like startups, hackathons, or when dealing with legacy systems where formal processes are impractical. However, it should be avoided for production-level work due to risks like technical debt and poor code quality.