By switching from a "waterfall" development timeline to the agile method, EVE Online developer CCP was actually able to release Apocrypha, its biggest expansion yet to the space-based MMO, eve isk in less time than it took to release previous expansions.

Here, EVE lead designer Noah Ward talks to Gamasutra about how the team's new strategy of two-week sprints adapts well to the inherently-ongoing nature of MMO development.

He candidly shares some of the challenges in creating the free-to-subscribers Apocrypha expansion, which added new vessels, wormhole exploration and a new NPC faction -- and reveals how modular "coreifying" of key EVE assets allow the team flexibility in working on "other projects."

How did your development work before, and what made you change over?

We used to be on a waterfall development schedule.It worked that we would ship something in Winter, and then we would start again in the design and programming and key way phase -- approximately two months for the various phases -- and every six months, we would release something.

But now that we've switched over, eve isk we don't have these huge waterfall phases anymore, it's just iterative, agile two week sprints, and we have a demo day at the end.