A development stance is a set of often loosely related ideas or heuristics that characterize how software developers view their tasks.  The term is meant to help us visualize a literal ''physical'' stance:  how (and where, and when) we stand when we face the challenges that our work provides us.

Contrast a development stance with a development method.  A stance is more loosely defined than a method.  A method certainly implies a stance, and vice versa.  But the relationship is not one-to-one:  Although some modern software development methods make much of their differences from one another, from a development stance point of view, these are just intramurals.  Booch and OMT, for instance, differed in method but not, by and large, in stance, thus their (somewhat uneasy) merger.

A development stance may also influence the naming of the methods.
The ThoughtPattern evoked from DefensiveProgramming is not the same as from OffensiveProgramming, and ExtremeProgramming give rise to altogether different ideas.

''This includes ElementalProgramming''
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See also DevelopmentTeamModels
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CategorySoftwareDevelopment